CHARLES  KNAPP 

LIBRARY 

1937 


Columbia  ^nitiem'ti) 

inttifCttpofi^rttigork 


LIBRARY 


THE  NEMESIS  OF  NATIONS 


Augescunt  alia  gentes^  alia  minuuntur, 
inque  hrevi  spatio  mutantur  sacla  animantum 
et    quasi    cursores    vitai    lampada    tradunt. 

Lucretius,  De  Rerum  Natura,  II.  77-79. 


The  NEMESIS  of  NATIONS 

STUDIES    IN    HISTORY    by 
W.    ROMAINE    PATERSON 


THE 
ANCIENT  WORLD 


•  •      • 

>         •      .> 


i  i        i         •> 


MCMVII 
NEW  YORK  :  E.  P.  BUTTON 


CO. 


•     •        • 


pal  3 


TO 
MY   MOTHER 


PREFACE 

The  author's  immediate  duty  is  to  state  his  obligations 
to  the  work  of  others,  and  certainly  it  would  be  im- 
possible to  overstate  them.  The  list  of  books  placed  at 
the  end  of  each  chapter  may  serve,  however,  to  indicate 
the  amount  of  the  debt,  for  without  those  books  the 
chapters  could  never  have  been  written.  It  seems  impos- 
sible to  hope  that  no  errors  have  accompanied  the  attempt 
to  reduce  so  great  a  mass  of  material  within  the  limits  of 
this  volume  and  to  discover  the  truth  amid  accounts  of 
it  which  often  destroy  each  other.  The  author,  therefore, 
will  be  grateful  for  correction  in  matters  of  detail.  It 
seemed  to  him  to  be  a  legitimate  method  to  gather  together 
the  results  of  investigation  over  a  wide  area,  in  order  to 
make  them  the  basis  of  an  interpretation  of  human 
history.  Juries,  and  even  judges,  before  they  pronounce 
a  decision,  are  frequently  dependent  upon  the  evidence 
of  experts.  And  the  facts  of  history,  because  they  are 
human  facts,  must  at  last  be  judged  by  the  common 
jury  of  mankind.  In  the  present  instance  a  humble 
attempt  is  made  to  utilise  part  of  the  expert  evidence 
for  the  purpose  of  forming  some  opinions  on  the  life 
and  death  of  nations.  It  need  scarcely  be  said  that  the 
bibliographies  do  not  cover  the  entire  subject,  but  refer 
either  to  those  books  which  are  quoted  in  the  notes  or 
to  those  which  the  author  has  most  frequently  consulted. 
Except  where  otherwise  stated,  every  reference  has  been 
verified.  In  attempting  to  portray  the  vital  world  which 
lies  behind  Oriental  and  classical  scholarship,  the  writer 
determined,  as  far  as  possible,  to  see  that  world  not  so 


Vll 


Vlll 


PREFACE 


much  from  the  top  as  from  underneath.  There  are  those 
who,  when  they  have  been  admitted  into  a  luxuriant 
garden,  are  content  to  admire  the  wealth  of  blossom  and 
of  fruit.  But  there  are  others  who  think  of  the  roots 
toiling  below,  unseen,  unpraised,  in  a  great  struggle  to 
win  the  necessary  nourishment  for  the  whole  organism. 
All  roots  are  grotesque,  and  they  dwell  in  darkness,  but 
they  are  near  the  sources  of  life.  And  although  the 
roots  of  the  early  States  are  grotesque  indeed,  we  shall 
scarcely  be  able  to  understand  ancient  civilisation  unless 
we  know  its  dark  basis.  That  basis  was  slavery,  and 
it  affected  fundamentally  the  fortunes  of  all  the  old 
nations.  Its  study,  therefore,  seemed  to  furnish  some 
sense  of  the  tragic  unity  of  their  destinies.  Not  in  any 
abstract  and  preconceived  principle,  but  in  the  concrete 
fact,  expressed  with  Roman  rigour  in  the  Law  of  Rome, 
do  we  come  face  to  face  with  the  mechanism  of  their 
governments — "In  potestate  itaque  dominorum  sunt  servi. 
Quae  quidem  potestas  juris  gentium  est ;  nam  apud  omnes 
peraeque  gentes  animadvertere  possumus,  dominis  in 
servos  vitas  necisque  potestatem  esse,  et  quodcumque  per 
servumadquiritur,  id  domino  adquiritur" — "Slaves, there- 
fore, are  in  the  power  of  their  masters,  and  that  is  in 
accordance  with  the  Law  of  Nations.  For  in  all  nations 
we  see  that  masters  have  the  power  of  life  and  death  over 
their  slaves,  and  whatever  the  slave  earns  he  earns  for  his 
master."^  It  is  with  the  internal  effect  of  this  Law  of 
Slavery  which  was  the  first  "Law  of  Nations"  that  the 
present  work  chiefly  deals.  In  another  volume  the 
author  hopes  to  trace  that  gradual  transformation  of  the 
world's  social  basis  by  means  of  which,  in  the  Middle 
Ages,  slavery  became  serfdom,  and,  in  modern  times, 
serfdom  became  poverty.  Thereby  we  shall  perhaps  be 
able  to  discover  the  lines  of  connection  between  modern 
and  ancient  economic  misery,  and  to  contrast  the  ancient 

*  Institutes  of  Justinian,  I.  viii.  i. 


PREFACE 


IX 


with  the  modern  conception  of  national  duty  towards  the 
working  class.  The  book  takes  the  form  of  "  Studies," 
but  each  "  Study,"  since  it  makes  a  contribution  to  the 
main  theme,  is  treated  as  a  chapter. 

The  mere  statistics  of  slavery  would  be  in  themselves 
barren,  and  would  throw  little  light  on  the  characteristics 
of  the  different  civilisations  which  have  been  selected. 
The  method  adopted,  therefore,  is  descriptive,  and  there 
has  been  presented  besides  in  each  case  a  rapid  preliminary 
sketch  of  some  of  those  facts  and  factors,  political,  artistic, 
and  religious,  which  had  organic  importance  in  their  day. 
The  reader  may  reasonably  ask  on  what  principle  the 
selection  of  States  has  been  made,  and  why,  for  instance, 
ancient  Egypt  is  unrepresented.  Apart  from  the  fact 
that  the  author  has  not  been  able  to  make  any  special 
study  of  industrial  conditions  in  ancient  Egypt,  it  may 
be  pointed  out  that  it  is  not  now  believed  that  Egyp- 
tian civilisation  was  independent  or  isolated.  Egypt 
was  partaker  in  a  civilisation  whose  ramifications  reach 
back  to  Asia — whence,  indeed,  the  Egyptians  had  pro- 
bably come.  The  "  Egyptian  basis "  had  other  strata 
beneath  it.  We  do  not  know  how  many  generations 
of  the  men  who  laid  the  first  rude  foundations  of  all 
our  human  building  had  disappeared  in  the  night  of 
ages  long  before  the  date  of  Egypt  or  of  Babylon. 
But  so  far  as  early  recorded  history  is  concerned  the 
lines  of  growth  and  of  decay  are  sufficiently  visible  in 
those  social  systems  which  have  been  selected.  A 
reference  in  the  fourth  chapter  to  conditions  of  labour 
in  Egypt  will  help,  however,  to  emphasise  the  uniformity 
of  the  industrial  basis  of  the  ancient  world.  The  writer 
is,  of  course,  aware  of  the  suspicion  with  which  "  generali- 
sation "  is  regarded  by  the  English  historical  school. 
Surely,  however,  Polybius  was  right  when  he  said  that 
it  is  the  duty  of  the  historian  to  construct  out  of  the 
chaos  of  episodes  a  comprehensive  scheme.     In  spite  of 

b 


X  PREFACE 

the  method  usually  adopted  in  this  country,  and  in  spite 
of  the  "endless  differences"  which  a  great  historian  like 
Stubbs  saw  in  the  mass  of  facts,  it  is  still  possible  to  be 
impressed,  not  by  the  differences  or  by  the  isolation,  but 
by  the  interlocking   of  causes   and   events   over  a  wide 
area.     We  discover,  in  fact,  among  ancient  States  traces 
of  constant  borrowings  in  the   region  of  industry,  art, 
politics,  and  religion.     And  at  least  in  their  social  basis 
there   is   a   fearful    monotony.       To   say   that   "  perfect 
knowledge  is  independent  of  and  even  inconsistent  with 
any  generalisation  at  all "  is  to  say  that  knowledge  can 
never  be  anything  but  a  morass  of  detail.     It  would  be 
far  truer  to  say  that  without  generalisation,  knowledge, 
if  it  exists  at   all,  exists  in   a   state   of  chaos.      In  the 
study  of  History,  as  in  the  study  of  Nature,  some  of  the 
most  impressive  chapters  deal  with  the  gravitation  and 
the  fusion  of  forces.     The  present  writer  has  ventured 
to   gather   together  a  few   of  those   facts  which,  in  his 
opinion,   are    best  fitted    to   illuminate   dark   ages.      But 
he    hopes    that,    although    the    following    pages    present 
only  outlines,  and  pretend  to  be  nothing  but  the  frag- 
ment of  a  fragment  of  a  great  subject,  he  may  not  have 
altogether  failed  to  suggest  a  certain  sense  of  unity  in 
the  theme. 

Sincere  thanks  are  due  to  the  author's  former 
teachers,  Dr.  Edward  Caird,  Master  of  Balliol,  and 
Professor  Gilbert  Murray,  for  the  kindness  which 
prompted  them  to  read  the  proofs  and  to  offer  advice 
and  encouragement.  Professor  Murray  was  not  always 
in  agreement  with  the  views  expressed,  and  was  good 
enough  to  suggest  important  modifications  and  im- 
provements. If  not  all  of  those  suggestions  have  been 
adopted,  and  if  some  errors  remain,  the  responsibility 
rests  entirely  upon  the  author.  To  Mr.  W.  H.  Helm 
and  to  Mr.  H.  N.  Brailsford,  M.A.,  cordial  thanks  are 
also  due  for  much  helpful  criticism. 


CONTENTS 

CHAP.  PAGE 

I.  INTRODUCTION i 

II.  HINDUSTAN 23 

III.  BABYLON 69 

IV.  GREECE 131 

V.  ROME 218 

INDEX 339 


zi 


THE    NEMESIS    OF    NATIONS 


CHAPTER    I 

INTRODUCTION 

The  deeper  our  study  of  human  history  the  more 
bewildered  becomes  our  sense  of  the  vast  entanglement 
of  the  world's  affairs.  When  the  annals  of  mankind 
open  we  discover  a  number  of  communities  apparently 
dwelling  in  isolation,  but  as  we  become  familiar  with 
their  racial  characteristics,  their  religions,  their  languages, 
and  their  laws  we  begin  to  detect  signs  not  merely  of 
contact  but  of  kinship.  Just  as  the  frontier  between 
Europe  and  Asia  is  artificial,  so,  many  of  the  boundaries 
which  divide  nations  and  races  are  seen  to  be  unreal. 
Long  before  history  began  to  be  written  great  racial 
amalgamations  had  occurred,  and  Asiatic  types  had 
appeared  in  Europe,  and  European  types  had  appeared 
in  Asia.  Moreover,  there  was  a  time  when  Europe, 
Asia,  and  Africa  formed  a  single  continent.  Geological 
evidence  proves  that  Sicily,  for  instance,  is  part  of  a 
broken  bridge  which  once  united  Africa  and  Europe, 
and  that  at  Gibraltar  the  Atlantic  was  shut  out  by  an 
isthmus.  And  just  as  the  Flora  of  Spain  betrays  signs 
of  a  continuity  of  African  vegetation,  so,  the  presence 
of  African  skulls  in  the  prehistoric  graves  of  Europe 

A 


2  THE   NEMESIS   OF   NATIONS 

implies  the  primeval  fusion  of  European  and  African 
races.  These  things  may  trouble  European  pride,  but 
they  rest  upon  scientific  evidence.  Many  if  not  most 
of  the  really  fundamental  causes  which  created  the  whole 
series  of  historical  events  are  thus  hidden  from  the  eye 
of  history.  Indeed,  the  historian  is  like  a  man  who 
comes  to  a  chess-board  and  finds  that  the  pieces  are 
already  in  position  and  that  the  game  is  half  played. 
It  has  been  said  that  it  is  not  his  function  to  trace  the 
obscure  causes  of  the  world's  present  arrangement  or 
to  look  into  the  deep  sea  of  origins.  But  surely  it  is 
his  duty  at  least  to  suggest  the  depth  out  of  which 
human  history  comes. 

2.  The  distribution  of  sea  and  land,  the  mystery  of 
vegetation,  and  the  nature  of  the  landscape  must  never 
be  neglected  by  the  historian,  because  these  things  have 
influenced  the  life  of  man.  We  cannot  forget  that  the 
world's  scenery,  the  actual  theatre  in  which  man  makes 
his  appearance,  continued  to  suffer  violent  changes  even 
after  he  had  appeared.  We  know  that  the  earth's 
physical  structure  has  been  frequently  undermined.  In 
antiquity  there  was  a  whisper  that  an  Atlantic  race  had 
perished  and  that  an  entire  continent  had  been  entombed. 
And  the  scientific  exploration  of  the  bed  of  the  Atlantic 
has  suggested  that  this  belief  may  not  belong,  as  some 
modern  writers  have  supposed,  to  the  mere  region  of 
fantasy.  The  fact  that  Sicily  was  broken  off  from 
Italy  on  one  side  and  from  Africa  on  the  other,  and  that 
England  was  broken  off  from  Europe,  gives  us  a  glimpse 
into  some  great  primeval  process  of  disruption.  There 
are  parts  of  the  English  Channel  so  shallow  that  if 
St.  Paul's  Cathedral  were  placed  in  the  middle  of  ^  the 
Straits  of  Dover  half  of  the  building  would  be  visible. 
The  sunken  lines  of  connection  lie,  however,  not  only  in 
the  Channel  but  in  the  North  Sea,  which,  according  to 


INTRODUCTION  3 

some  naturalists,  contains  the  remnants  of  a  great  forest 
as  well  as  the  ancient  prolongation  of  the  valley  of  the 
Rhine.  But  this  wrenching  of  islands  from  the  main- 
land is  only  part  of  a  dynamic  process  which  has 
operated  throughout  Nature.  For  Nature  is  funda- 
mentally volcanic. 

3.  The  presence  of  such  islands  as  the  Hebrides,  the 
Faroes,  the  Azores,  Rockall,  Iceland,  and  Greenland  far 
out  in  the  Atlantic  ;  the  sudden  variations  of  that  sea's 
depth  ;  and  the  discovery  of  volcanic  ridges  in  its  bed,  do 
not  indeed  prove  that  the  Atlantic  is  the  tomb  of  a 
continent,  but  they  render  the  suggestion  less  startling 
and  fantastic.  Modern  soundings  have  confirmed  the 
statements  of  old  Scandinavian  and  Venetian  sailors  who 
spoke  of  submerged  land  lying  between  the  27th  and 
29th  degrees  of  N.  latitude  and  the  59th  and  60th  de- 
grees of  VV.  longitude.  But  the  entire  bed  of  the  ocean 
further  westward  is  a  great  landscape  of  valleys  and 
high  hills  lying  between  America  and  Europe.  In 
fact,  both  continents  are  only  the  extended  summits  of 
two  plateaus  which  rise  out  of  the  sea.  Those  plateaus, 
however,  are  connected  by  a  ridge  which  runs  through 
the  Atlantic,  divides  the  northern  from  the  southern 
waters,  and  sometimes  lifts  itself  to  within  400  fathoms 
of  the  surface.  This  sunken  ridge,  which  begins  at 
Great  Britain,  reappears  out  of  the  sea  at  the  Azores,  at 
Guiana  on  the  north-eastern  coast  of  South  America,  and 
at  St.  Paul's  Rocks,  and  it  betrays  its  volcanic  nature 
in  the  island  of  Ascension,  which  is  one  of  its  peaks. 
Modern  men  of  science  have  boldly  announced  the 
doctrine  not  merely  that  north-western  Europe  was 
once  linked  to  North  America,  but  that  in  the  region 
which  is  now  the  South  Atlantic  land  stretched  between 
Africa  and  Brazil.^     It  is  true  that  in  opposition  to  those 

*  Neumayr,  II.,  pp.  547  sqq. 


4  THE   NEMESIS   OF   NATIONS 

naturalists  who  suppose  that  the  Azores,   Madeira,  the 
Canaries,  and  Iceland  are  the  fragments  of  the  prolonga- 
tion of  Africa  and  Europe,  other  writers   maintain  that 
such  islands  are  independent  formations.     The  birth  of 
continents  is  due,  it  is  said,  to  elevation  of  the  borders  of 
the  ocean's  basin.     And  it  is  pointed  out  that  that  process 
of  upheaval  continues,  because  as  late  as    1 8 1 1    in   the 
Azores  group  a  new  volcanic  island  rose  out  of  the  sea. 
The  volcanic  process  is  thus  creative  as  well  as  destructive. 
On  the  other  hand,  it  is  admitted   that  the  structure  of 
Atlantic  islands  like  the  Bermudas  can  be  explained  only 
by  the  subsidence  of  a  sub-oceanic  mountain,  and  that  it 
is   possible  to   trace   the  submerged   connection  between 
Australia,  New  Zealand,  and  Asia.     A  sunken  coast-line, 
for   instance,    separates    the   deeper   water   of   the   West 
Pacific   from  the  shallower  water    of   the    archipelagos. 
It  might  be   possible,  therefore,  to  reconcile   these   con- 
flicting theories  by  supposing  that  during  ages  alternate 
elevations  and   subsidences  were    taking    place    over   an 
immense  area.     If,  for  instance,  the  peculiar  form  of  the 
promontory  of  Gibraltar  is  to  be  explained  by  a  series  of 
subsidences  and  elevations  during  which  Europe  was  dis- 
united,  reunited,  and   again  disunited    from  Africa,   the 
same   process   may  have   taken   place  at   different   points 
throughout  wide  areas  like  the  Atlantic  and  the  Pacific. 
The  southern  coast  of  Sweden  and  the  western  coast  of 
Greenland  have  been  visibly  subsiding  during  centuries, 
and  the  fjords  of  Norway  and  the  firths  of  Scotland  were 
once  inland  valleys.     If  it  be  pointed  out  that  the  bed  of 
the  ocean  betrays  no  signs  of  having  been  a  land-surface, 
it  may  be  replied  that  sufficient  time  has  elapsed  during 
which    vegetation    could    have    been    effaced,   and   rock, 
gravel,  and   sand  could   have    been    accumulated.     But, 
as    a  matter   of   fact,  submerged   forests   and   peat-beds 
actually    occur,    and    round    the    coasts    of    Devonshire 


INTRODUCTION  5 

and    Cornwall    tracts    of  sunken  vegetation    have   been 
discovered. 

4.  What  is  true  of  the  Atlantic  is  likewise  true  of 
the  Pacific.  Between  America  and  Asia,  as  between 
America  and  Europe,  a  volcanic  chain  lies  broken.  Lava 
and  tufa  have  been  found  in  the  Pacific's  bed.  At  one 
point  of  Behring  Strait  the  distance  from  coast  to  coast  is 
only  forty-eight  miles,  and  the  view  has  been  expressed 
that  a  continuity  of  land  once  united  America  and  China. ^ 
Moreover,  Polynesia  is  described  by  naturalists  as  "  an 
area  of  subsidence,"  and  its  innumerable  islands  are 
believed  to  be  the  debris  of  continents.^  This  area  is 
admitted  to  have  an  extent  of  at  least  6000  geographical 
miles.  Recent  discoveries  have  confirmed  the  truth 
of  Darwin's  theory  that  every  atoll  is  the  crown  of  a 
sunken  island.  For  instance,  investigations  at  Funa- 
futi, an  island  in  the  middle  of  the  Pacific,  have  proved 
that  its  form  is  due  to  a  subsidence  which  must  have 
amounted  to  877  feet.^  But  since  this  process  has  taken 
place  throughout  the  Pacific  a  great  part  of  its  area 
must  once  have  been  dry  land.  If  now  we  travel  still 
westwards  to  the  Indian  Ocean  we  shall  find  reason  to 
think  that  Madagascar,  which  is  thoroughly  volcanic, 
once  belonged  to  a  continent  which  united  Africa  and 
India.  Its  Flora  and  Fauna  are  African  and  Asiatic.  On 
the  one  hand,  the  reefs  and  islands  in  the  Indian  Ocean 
connect  it  with  Southern  Asia,  and  on  the  other,  a 
submarine  volcanic  chain  links  it  to  the  Comoro  Islands 
which  are  on  the  road  to  Africa.  Here,  then,  we  seem 
to  detect  a  volcanic  girdle  round  the  world,  which  at 
various  points  was  so  violently  loosened  that  entire 
continents  were   sundered,   and   were   left  to   work   out 

^  Neumayr,  II.,  p.  535. 

"^  Wallace,  "  Malay  Archipelago,"  p.  455. 

'  Sollas,  p.  130. 


6  THE   NEMESIS   OF   NATIONS 

different    destinies.     This    primeval   continuity    of   soil, 
therefore,  might  explain  why  we  discover  resemblances 
between   races  and  species   geographically  remote.     We 
may  then  listen  with  less  incredulity  to  naturalists  who 
detect    racial    affinities    between     Papuans    and    African 
negroes,  and  between  Malays  and  Chinese  ;  to  men  like 
Alexander  von  Humboldt,  who  believed  that  the  Mexican 
calendar  had  an  Asiatic  origin ;  and  to  modern  travellers 
who  perceive  suggestive  resemblances  between  prehistoric 
Mexican   architecture  and    Tartar   monuments,   or  who 
declare   that    a    Semitic   language  was  spoken   and   that 
gods  of  Asia  and  of  Africa  received  primeval  worship  in 
the  islands  of  the  Pacific.     History,  indeed,  is  not  called 
upon  to  explain  the  gaps  which  separate  alien  or  allied 
races  of  men.     But  it  is  well  that  she  should  remem- 
ber that  during  unnumbered  ages  vast  and  compulsory 
changes  took  place  in  the  distribution  of  mankind.     No 
doubt  men  often  voluntarily  separated  from  each  other, 
and  the  different  routes  of  their  migrations  created  the 
deepest  differences  in  physical  type,  in  moral  character, 
in  language,  and  in  religion.     But  their  choice  of  terri- 
tory was  not  always  voluntary,  and  when  they  had  fixed 
upon  their  boundaries  Nature  sometimes  interfered  and 
violently  reshaped  the  map  of  the  world.     We  are  told, 
for   instance,   that    once   Europe   and   Asia  were  united 
across  the  Bosphorus ;  that  the  western   Mediterranean 
did  not  exist  ;  that  the  Atlantic  spread  across  the  Sahara 
and   the   Syrian  desert  far  into  Western  Asia ;  that  the 
Caspian  Sea  and   the   Sea   of  Aral   are  only  two  of  its 
great   pools   left  in   isolation  owing  to  vast   movements 
of  elevation  and  subsidence  within  three  continents ;   and 
that   the    Black  Sea  gradually  gnawed  its  way  through 
the  Dardanelles  into   the  eastern  Mediterranean,  and  so 
drained  a  great  part  of  Western  Asia.     Thus  the  actual 
soil  upon  which  man  plays  out  his  destiny  is  unstable. 


INTRODUCTION  7 

and  in  its  chaotic  elements  he  discovers  the  symbol  of 
his  own  history. 

5.  If,  then,  the  earth  was  once  a  vast  circular  road, 
it  is  not  surprising  that  the  human  race  gradually  began 
to  move  round  its  concentric  belts.  The  advance  was 
temporarily  interrupted  only  where  the  roadway  was 
broken  off  and  when  a  new  path  had  not  yet  been  dis- 
covered upon  the  sea.  Migration,  indeed,  appears  to  be 
one  of  the  great  laws  of  Nature,  and  her  restlessness 
early  entered  into  the  life  of  man.  Even  the  stars 
migrate.  There  is  no  real  stagnation  anywhere.  Just 
as  undulations  extend  from  one  ocean  to  another,  and 
just  as,  in  spite  of  barriers  in  the  ocean's  bed,  marine 
creatures  are  able  to  migrate  from  the  Equator  to  the 
Poles  and  back  again,  so,  on  land  a  similar  current  of 
life  and  motion  early  set  in,  and  is  still  advancing. 
Even  vegetation  has  wings.  We  find  that  the  plants  of 
Asia  reappear  in  Europe,  and  that  all  kinds  of  shrubs 
and  trees  push  their  way  into  different  continents.  In 
earlier  investigations  into  the  distribution  of  animals  and 
plants  it  was  usual  to  pay  too  much  attention  to  the 
work  of  man  and  too  little  to  the  work  of  Nature. 
Thus  it  was  supposed  that  wheat,  barley,  and  the  vine 
must  have  been  transplanted  from  Asia  into  Europe  by 
human  hands.  It  was  forgotten  that  vegetation  possesses 
its  own  dynamic  and  sporadic  power,  and  that  long 
before  man  was  at  work  upon  it  the  birds  and  the  winds 
were  sowers.  For  it  is  to  such  agencies  as  these  that 
modern  science  attributes  the  spread  of  many  of  the 
most  valuable  plants.  The  fact  that  at  one  time  in 
Southern  Europe  oats  were  considered  to  be  a  weed  is 
a  proof  that  man  had  not  originally  sown  them  there. 
Wheat,  barley,  and  the  vine  grew  wild  long  before  their 
culture  was  known.  During  innumerable  ages  Europe 
and  Asia  were  being  silently  prepared  for  their  guests, 


8  THE   NEMESIS   OF   NATIONS 

and  the  east  winds  brought  seeds  from  Asia  and  the 
west  winds  gave  back  seeds  from  Europe.  Moreover, 
reciprocal  fertilising  currents  were  flowing  between 
Europe  and  Africa.  An  examination  of  tertiary  de- 
posits has  made  it  clear  that  many  species  which  were 
once  ascribed  solely  to  the  South  and  the  East  must 
have  been  living  on  European  soil  when,  so  far  as  man 
is  concerned,  Europe  was  tenantless.  No  doubt  during 
the  glacial  period  many  plants  were  driven  out  of 
Europe  to  take  refuge  in  Asia  until  the  ice  melted  and 
the  way  was  clear  again  for  their  return.  But  recent 
inquiries  appear  to  have  proved  that  the  Ice  Age  was  not 
so  prolonged  and  that  its  ravages  were  not  so  wide- 
spread as  was  at  first  supposed.  Even  during  its  worst 
tyranny  a  great  part  of  Middle  and  probably  all  Southern 
Europe,  the  south  of  England,  and  the  Balkan  Pen- 
insula were  ice-free.  Fig-leaves  have  been  discovered 
in  the  quaternary  deposits  of  Tuscany  and  near  Mar- 
seilles, and  remains  of  olives  in  pliocene  beds  near 
Bologna.  Such  facts  are  sufficient  to  prove  that  many 
plants  had  found  their  way  into  Europe  without  the 
agency  of  man.  It  is  now  claimed  that  in  the  middle 
of  the  tertiary  period  the  wild  vine  was  growing  in 
places  so  distant  from  each  other  as  France,  England, 
Iceland,  Greenland,  and  Japan.  We  must  distinguish, 
however,  between  the  existence  of  a  plant  in  its  wild 
state  and  a  knowledge  of  its  potential  value.  And  there 
seems  reason  to  believe  that  it  was  not  in  Europe  but 
in  Asia  that  the  culture  of  the  vine  began.  We  find 
vineyards  spreading  from  the  south  to  the  north,  and 
from  the  east  to  the  west.  The  history  of  human 
language  often  shows  in  a  remarkable  way  how  closely 
ancient  races  had  elbowed  each  other,  and  one  of  its 
most  startling  facts  is  that  the  European  word  for 
wine  appears  to  be  fundamentally  related  to  the  word 


INTRODUCTION  9 

which  the  Hebrews  used  in  Asia  and  the  Ethiopians  in 
Africa.^ 

6.  But  if  plants  were  thus  propagated  by  natural 
processes,  it  is  clear  that  herds  of  wild  cattle  and  wild 
horses  in  search  of  vegetation  could  have  passed  to  and 
fro  between  the  continents  long  before  man  was  ready  to 
hunt  them.  Wild  sheep  and  goats  were  already  roaming 
in  Europe  before  their  value  was  known.  The  remains 
of  Asiatic  as  well  as  of  European  oxen  have  been  dis- 
covered among  the  megalithic  monuments  of  Brittany 
and  Auvergne.  Again,  whereas  it  used  to  be  supposed 
that  the  Asiatic  Steppes  were  the  only  home  of  the  horse, 
later  investigators,  like  Nehring,  claim  to  have  discovered 
the  remains  of  a  wild  horse,  a  native  of  Europe,  existing 
in  a  prehistoric  age.  It  was  a  thick,  heavy,  coarse  breed, 
however,  and  here,  as  in  so  many  other  cases,  the  finer  breed 
came  from  Asia.  Moreover,  while  in  Europe  the  horse  was 
still  being  hunted  as  prey,  in  Asia  and  most  likely  in  Baby- 
lonia he  had  been  tamed  and  taught  to  co-operate  with  man.^ 

7.  We  have  briefly  noticed  this  exchange  of  various 
forms  of  life  between  the  continents,  because  the  problem 
of  the  distribution  of  the  human  race  is  really  not  very 
different  from  the  problem  of  the  distribution  of  animals 
and  plants.  At  the  opening  of  history  we  find  not  merely 
men  but  men  apparently  of  allied  race  astride  the  frontier 
which  separates  Europe  and  Asia.  As  we  have  already  seen, 
we  ought  to  go  still  further,  and  say  that  the  history  of 
Europe  begins  with  a  racial  chaos  to  which  Africa  likewise 
contributed.  The  oldest  European  sepulchres  have  been 
searched,  and  human  skulls  of  ten  thousand  years  ago, 
and  displaying  close  approximations  to  African  and  Asiatic 

^  Early  Indo-European  waina,  Hebrew  jdin,  Ethiopian  wain,  old 
Greek  foii/oy,  Sanskrit  vend,  Latin  vinum,  Slavonic  vino,  Celtic  fin, 
old  Teutonic  vein,  German  IVein,  English  wine. 

2  In  India,  however,  in  the  Vedic  age  the  horse  was  numbered  among 
the  sacrificial  victims. 


lo  THE   NEMESIS   OF   NATIONS 

types,  have  been  discovered.     At  Crenelle  near  Paris,  in  an 
ancient  bed  of  the  Seine  and  far  beneath  the  accumulated 
alluvium  of  centuries,  the  remains  of  three  different  races 
have  been   disinterred.       The   skulls  which   lay  deepest 
were  dolichocephalic,  that  is  to  say,  their  characteristic 
was  length  rather  than  breadth,  and  the  jaw  was  power- 
fully developed.     They  have  been  adjudged  to  a  northern 
European  race  which  is  still  represented  by  the  Scandi- 
navian and  Teutonic  type.     Above   those  remains,  and 
about   twelve  feet    from   the   surface,   other   long  skulls 
were  found,  but  in  this  case  the  jaw  was  weak.     High 
authorities  such  as  De  Quatrefages,  Broca,  and  Virchow 
attribute  those  second  skulls  to  the  so-called  Iberians  who 
had  come  from  North  Africa.     The  Iberians  belonged  to 
the  Berber  race,  and  had  spread  over  a  wide  area,  because 
their  remains  have  been  found  in  Britain,  France,  Spain, 
Algeria,   and  Teneriffe.^      Moreover,  the  resemblance  of 
Berber  to  Egyptian  skulls   has   convinced   some  writers 
that  once  a  great  Mediterranean  people  had  outposts  in 
Europe  and  Africa.      Lastly,  in  the  uppermost  layer  of 
the  gravel  at  Crenelle,  about  five  feet  from  the  surface, 
there  were  discovered  other  human  skulls,  brachycephalic, 
that  is   to  say,  whose    characteristic  was  breadth   rather 
than  length,  and  they  have  been  supposed  to  belong  to 
a  European  race,  the  Celts.      Since,  however,  an  Asiatic 
race,  the  Mongolians,  are  likewise  brachycephalic,  it  cannot 
be  maintained  that  breadth  of  skull  is  a  purely  European 
trait.     Some  writers  point  out  that  in  the  east  of  Europe 
there  is  an  approximation  to  the  Asiatic  type,  and  in  the 
south  to   the  African,   and  that  the  European  is  inter- 
mediate.     The    difficulty,    however,    of   attempting    to 
identify  any  particular  cranial  form  as  belonging  specially 
to  any  particular  race  is  illustrated  by  the  fact  that  when 

1  Even  Virchow  is  tempted  to  ask  if  they  did  not  belong  to  the 
"  Atlantic  race  "  (pp.  37,  38)- 


INTRODUCTION  1 1 

in  1878  a  skull  from  Central  Asia  was  examined  by  the 
Anthropological  Society  of  Paris  it  was  judged  to  be  in 
every  respect  similar  to  the  type  of  Central  Europe.  It 
is  believed  that  of  all  physical  characteristics  the  skull  is 
most  stable  and  varies  least  from  one  generation  to 
another.  An  effort  was  made,  therefore,  to  discover  by 
means  of  such  prehistoric  remains  the  original  inhabitants 
of  Europe.  Those  skulls  which  lie  deepest  must  be  the 
oldest,  and  all  the  skulls  attributable  to  the  quaternary 
period  are  of  the  ;long  type.  But  since  such  skulls  best 
correspond  to  those  of  modern  Scandinavians,  it  has  been 
maintained  that  the  European  race,  par  excellence^  must 
have  originated  not  far  from  Scandinavia.  And  although 
it  is  admitted  that  the  earliest  men  cannot  have  possessed 
white  skins,  blond  hair,  and  blue  eyes,  nevertheless  since 
these  are  the  features  of  modern  Scandinavians,  their 
ancestors  must  have  already  acquired  them  in  the  climate 
of  northern  or  middle  Europe.  Unfortunately,  however, 
Virchow  had  already  ^  pointed  out  that  niggers  also  have 
long  skulls,  and  that  no  one  can  prove  that  any  race 
possesses  invariable  characteristics  such  as  long  heads,  blond 
hair,  and  blue  eyes.  The  modern  Basques  in  Southern 
Europe  are  dark  and  have  long  heads.  In  northern  and 
southern  Germany, Denmark,  Belgium,  Holland,  England, 
and  France  the  broader  heads  are  not  merely  numerous  but 
often  predominant.  And  so  far  as  racial  colour  is  concerned 
the  blond  type  cannot  be  held  to  be  exclusively  PZuropean, 
because  certain  tribes  of  the  Himalayas  are  also  blond, 
and  gradations  of  colour  are  due  to  climate.  Variations 
within  a  race  may  be  explained  either  by  mixture  with 
other  races  or  by  the  influence  of  climate  and  habits,  or 
by  a  combination  of  both  those  causes.  It  is,  moreover, 
doubtful  whether  the  formation  of  the  skull  is  as  invari- 
able as  has  been  supposed.     Even  those  who  attempt  to 

1  In  1874. 


12  THE   NEMESIS   OF   NATIONS 

discover  a  pure  primitive  European  type  are  compelled 
to  admit  that  it  has  suffered  transformations.  Whereas 
the  ancient  Slavs,  for  instance,  had  long  heads,  their 
descendants  are  more  or  less  brachycephalic.  The  most 
accurate  observers  perceive  in  Europe  an  amalgamation 
of  types,  and  it  seems  to  be  impossible  to  disentangle  the 
original  European  race.^  Long  heads  are  found  in 
Europe  and  in  Africa,  and  broad  heads  in  Europe  and 
in  Asia.  Therefore  the  view  has  been  expressed  that 
originally  there  were  only  two  primitive  races.  But 
science  could  not  stop  her  inquiry  even  here,  since  it  is 
her  task  to  track  Nature's  baffling  law  of  divergence  and 
variation  down  to  the  simplest  elements  and  beginnings. 
If  even  the  oak-tree  has  given  birth  to  three  hundred 
different  species,  we  should  not  be  surprised  at  the  in- 
finitive diversity  of  human  stocks,  for  there  is  no  creature 
liable  to  so  great  variation  as  man.  The  maximum  of 
Nature's  types  are  all  reducible  to  the  minimum  of  her 
archetypes.  Her  early  germs  are  capable  of  abundant 
expansion  and  ceaseless  variety,  and  her  processes  have 
involved  an  immense  intermarriage  of  living  forms.  She 
has  interlocked  entire  races,  but  has  hidden  the  truth 
from  their  descendants.  And  she  leaves  us  only  to  guess 
the  steps  of  her  vast  synthesis. 

8.  But  if  there  was  an  interlocking  of  races  there 
was  likewise  an  interlocking  of  their  languages.  Whereas 
a  superficial  observer  supposes  that  the  languages  of 
Europe  are  all  different,  the  student  of  them  knows  that 
they  are  all  related  not  merely  to  each  other  but  also  to 

^  It  is  incredible  that  after  the  destructive  criticism  by  Van  den  Gheyn, 
Reinach,  Ujfalvy,  Sergi,  and  Seiler  any  one  can  be  found  to  support 
Penka's  theory  of  a  Scandinavian  origin  of  the  "  Aryan  "  peoples.  Penka 
even  professes  to  have  discovered  that  it  was  in  Europe  that  the  human 
race  originated  {Origines  Ariaca,  pp.  76  et  sgq.).  Seiler  well  describes 
the  entire  hypothesis  as  "  ein  Meer  von  Unsicherheit — Die  Heimath  der 
Indogermanen"  (p.  13). 


INTRODUCTION  13 

languages  beyond  Europe.      Moreover,  that  relation  was 
prehistoric.      When  the   annals  of  Europe  began  there 
was  being  spoken  in  Hindustan  a  language  structurally 
and    fundamentally   the   same   as    the   language    of  the 
Greeks,   the   Romans,   the  Celts,  and    the    ancestors   of 
modern  Russians  and  Englishmen.     The  old  Indian  or 
Sanskrit  word  for  mother  was  mdtir^  the  old  Persian  was 
also  mdtar^  Greek  was  mTr]^^  Latin  mater^  Irish  mdthir^ 
old   German    muotar^    old    Russian    mati^   and    Icelandic 
modhir.     Similar  equations  exist  for  other  names  of  close 
kin   such  as   father,   brother,   sister,  daughter,  and  son. 
The  peoples  who,  although  so  far  sundered,  were  using 
this  common  language  had  likewise   common  religious 
ideas.     In  Hindustan  the  god  of  the  sky  was  Dyaus,  in 
Greece  Zeus,   in  Italy  Ju-piter  (Dyaus-pita'),  in  ancient 
Germany  Zio.     Fire,   the  Dawn,  and   the  Sun  received 
kindred  names  in  Europe  and  Asia.     The  English  word 
star  was  in  Sanskrit  likewise  stdr^  in  ancient  Persian  stare, 
in  Greek  aa-ry'jp^   in    Armenian   asil^  in  Latin  Stella^   old 
German  sterro.     And   if  we  turn  to  names  for  familiar 
things  and   man's  daily  labour  and   experience  we  shall 
find  a  startling  equivalence.     Thus  many  of  the  words  for 
primitive   processes  of  agriculture,  for  barley,  night  and 
day,  winter  and  spring,  houses,  and  cattle  were  the  same 
in    Hindustan    as    in   Northern,    Central,  and   Southern 
Europe.      The  English   word    to    weave  is    organically 
related  to  an  old  Asiatic-European   root  ve  which  had 
the  same  meaning.     We   might  reproduce  similar  equi- 
valences indefinitely.     We  shall  mention  only  one  other 
instance,  because  it  indicates  how  closely  in  a  primeval 
age  Europe  and  Asia  had  come  in  contact.     The  word 
which  the  early  Hindus  used  for  waggon^  together  with 
names  for  its  constituent  parts  such  as  wheel^  axle^  and 
yoke^   reappear  in   almost   all  the  languages   of  Europe. 
And  the  fact  that  the  waggon  was  in  use  thousands  of 


14  THE   NEMESIS   OF   NATIONS 

years  ago  partly  helps  us  to  see  why  peoples  so  remote 
from  each  other  spoke  practically  the  same  language. 
Their  ancestors  must  have  moved  away  from  the  seats  of 
a  common  origin. 

9.  How,  indeed,  are  we  to  explain  the  fact  that  a 
language  like  a  living  nerve  connected  humanity  in 
Europe  with  humanity  in  Asia  in  a  primeval  age .'' 
When  the  discovery  of  the  organic  relations  between 
the  European  languages  and  those  of  ancient  Iran  and 
Hindustan  was  made  it  was  immediately  supposed  that 
the  ancestors  of  the  European  peoples  had  migrated 
from  Asia.  The  word  "Aryan"  was  applied  to  the 
whole  stock  because  according  to  the  Zend-Avesta,  the 
sacred  book  of  one  of  its  branches,  Ariana  was  the  holy 
land  of  the  race.^  Since,  however,  it  is  now  known  that 
language  is  no  proper  racial  test,  the  word  "Aryan"  is 
used  timidly.  A  long  controversy,  which  is  by  no 
means  closed,  has  raged  round  the  question  whether  it 
was  in  Asia  that  the  "race"  originated  at  all.  That 
controversy  must  not  detain  us  here.  But  it  is  obvious 
that  Pictet's  statement  that  a  language  implies  a  people 
who  spoke  it  remains  true.  Even  those  who  reject  the 
too  sudden  conclusions  of  early  Sanskrit  scholars  admit 
that  the  language  and  the  people  who  invented  it  must 
have  had  an  original  unity  and  nucleus."  The  great 
variety  of  European  dialects  into  which  the  language 
was  broken — Greek,  Latin,  Celtic,  Lithuanian,  Teutonic 
— may  be  explained  by  supposing  that  just  as  the  dis- 
covery of  the  use  of  fire  or  of  the  plough  spread 
among  primitive  nations,  so  the  Aryan  speech,  not 
merely  because  it  belonged   to   a   conquering    race   but 

1  Zend-Avesta,  Fargard  1.3(5),  Darmesteter's  translation.  "  The  first 
of  the  good  lands  and  countries  which  I,  Ahura  Mazda,  created  was  the 
Airyana  Vaego,  by  the  Vanguhi  Daitya." 

■■'  Johannes  Schmidt,  p.  29. 


INTRODUCTION  15 

because  it  possessed  superior  powers  of  expression,  was 
accepted  among  alien  peoples  who  were  less  articulate 
and  less  civilised.  Here,  however,  we  are  mainly  con- 
cerned with  the  fact  that  a  current  of  thought  and 
speech  actually  akin  to  our  own  was  passing  between 
Asia  and  Europe  in  a  prehistoric  age.  The  controversy 
regarding  the  exact  point  whence  that  stream  first  arose 
has  created  a  kind  of  continental  jingoism,  and  writers 
have  asserted  the  claims  of  Europe  with  as  much  in- 
dignation and  passion  as  if  they  had  been  writing 
patriotic  history.  But  in  the  primeval  ages  the  debt 
between  Europe  and  Asia  was  no  doubt  reciprocal  as  it 
is  to-day.  And  in  the  eye  of  universal  history  the  work  of 
the  world  belongs  to  no  single  nation  or  race  or  continent, 
but  is  the  result  of  a  collaboration  of  the  continents. 

10.  Although  we  have  no  clock  or  instrument  to 
measure  the  whole  night  of  ages,  there  are  reasons  for 
believing  that  at  least  so  far  as  the  higher  aspects  of 
civilisation  are  concerned  Asia  was  old  before  Europe 
was  young.  No  doubt  man  was  alive  and  busy  in  Europe 
in  the  later  Ice  Age.  We  know  that  he  was  struggling 
with  Nature  and  already  attempting  to  create  a  home  for 
himself  when  the  hippopotamus  was  in  England  and  when 
the  mammoth  and  other  monsters  were  trampling  the 
soil  of  Europe.  Although  the  world  about  him  was 
little  else  than  a  menagerie,  man  had  already  become 
articulate  in  his  own  peculiar  way.  In  one  of  the  caves 
of  central  France  there  was  discovered  the  tusk  of  a 
mammoth  with  a  sketch  of  the  animal  carved  upon  it. 
That  fact  alone  would  prevent  us  from  saying  that 
pictorial  art  had  an  Asiatic  origin.  But  we  cannot 
follow  European  man  up  the  painful  ladder  of  his  ascent. 
He  had  come  through  unknown  depths  of  savagery 
before  he  began  to  adorn  himself  with  the  red  oxide  of 
iron.     And  the  bracelets  of  shells  which  are  found  in  his 


1 6  THE   NEMESIS   OF   NATIONS 

graves  are  a  signal  not  merely  of  his  primeval  vanity  but 
of  his  partial  escape  from  more  degrading  conditions. 
We  detect,  however,  a  far  superior  civilisation  coming, 
and  coming  very  early,  from  the  East.  It  is  now  claimed 
that  at  least  in  the  third  millennium  before  Christ,  and 
long  prior  to  Phoenician  activity,  a  common  civilisation 
with  an  Oriental  basis  linked  the  European  and  the 
Asiatic  shores  of  the  ^gean.  Industrial  and  artistic 
methods,  together  with  religious  ideas,  were  common  to 
both  sides.  The  most  recent  investigations  seem  rather 
to  increase  the  European  debt.  The  centre,  the  west, 
and  the  north  of  Europe  remained  dark  for  ages,  and  the 
reason  was  that  they  were  not  in  contact  with  the  East. 
The  Latin  word  for  iron  {ferrum)  is  Asiatic,  and  together 
with  a  knowledge  of  working  the  metal  had  been  brought 
to  Italy  by  the  Phoenicians.^  Moreover,  we  must  dis- 
tinguish between  peoples  in  whose  territory  metal  lay  and 
peoples  who  knew  how  to  make  use  of  it.  Europe  was 
full  of  iron,  but  as  late  as  looo  B.C.  stone  implements 
were  being  used  in  the  north  and  the  centre.  And  in 
Scandinavia  iron  did  not  make  its  appearance  until  long 
after  it  was  known  in  the  south.  The  great  iron  mines 
in  Gaul  and  in  Britain  belonged  to  the  Celts,  but  it  is 
believed  that  they  obtained  their  knowledge  of  the  metal 
either  from  the  Greeks  or  the  Italians,  On  the  other 
hand,  iron  as  well  as  other  metals  had  long  been  in  use 
in  the  East.  The  Greek  word  for  gold  (xioi^cro?)  is  Asiatic 
(Assyrian  hurdsu),  and  the  word  for  metal  {fxhaWov)  be- 
trays likewise  Semitic  influence.^  The  arts  and  the  sciences 
had  advanced  in  Asia  long  before  they  were  known  in  the 
west.  While  the  European  was  still  carving  rude  char- 
acters on  the  rocks  great  achievements  in  sculpture  had 
taken  place  at  Babylon.     Although,  too,  even  a  savage 

^  Schrader,  p.  207. 

2  Metal  has  been  traced  through  the  Latin  jnetallum  to  a  Hebrew 
verb  tndtal^  which  signifies  "to  work  like  a  smith." 


INTRODUCTION  17 

tribe  may  be  able  to  invent  a  system  of  writing,  and 
although  doubtless  there  were  primitive  European 
alphabets,  yet  the  alphabet  which  we  use  to-day  was 
invented  in  Asia  nineteen  centuries  before  Christ.  While, 
again,  in  Europe  the  plough  was  still  the  crooked  branch 
of  a  tree,  agriculture  had  become  a  science  in  the  East, 
and  astronomy,  most  likely  coinage,  and  certainly  the 
modern  system  of  measuring  time,  all  had  an  Asiatic 
origin.  Asia,  therefore,  was  frequently  the  giver, 
Europe  the  receiver.  Europe  can  no  more  throw  off 
the  influence  of  Asia  than  a  bather  emerging  from  the 
sea  can  prevent  the  water  dripping  from  him.  Many 
of  the  deepest  causes  of  her  civilisation  are  to  be  found 
in  eastern  lands.  It  was  in  Asia  that  Christ  was  born. 
We  cannot  say,  indeed,  that  Europe  was  only  an  Asiatic 
outpost.  The  earliest  prehistoric  relations  between  both 
continents  are  lost  in  the  depth  of  ages.  But  there  is 
still  a  sense  in  which  Europe  is  the  evening  of  the  world, 
Asia  its  dawn.  And  it  is  still  possible  to  say  that  the 
human  movement  has  been  from  sunrise  to  sunset  and 
then  back  to  sunrise  as  the  West  repenetrated  the  East. 

II.  It  is  for  such  reasons,  then,  that  in  the  following 
pages,  in  which  we  make  an  attempt  to  catch  the  spirit 
of  some  ancient  civilisations,  we  shall  begin  not  with 
Europe  but  with  Asia.  And  we  shall  first  choose 
Hindustan ;  not,  indeed,  because  its  culture  was  the 
oldest — compared  with  Sumerian  civilisation  it  appeared 
late — but  because  the  conquerors  of  early  India,  who 
were  allied  at  least  by  language  to  the  European  peoples, 
had  consolidated  a  social  system  and  had  created  a 
literature  while  the  greater  part  of  Europe  was  still 
in  chaos.  The  civilisation  of  Hindustan,  therefore, 
marked  the  strongest  Aryan  outpost  in  the  East.-^    From 

1  According  to   some  writers,  the   Ainu   who   conquered    Japan   in 
prehistoric  times  spoke  an  Aryan  language,  and  it  is  certain  that  they 

.  B 


1 8  THE  NEMESIS  OF   NATIONS 

this  eastern  limit  we  shall  then  move  through  Western 
Asia  to  the  Mediterranean.  And  when  we  arrive  there 
we  shall  find  that  during  many  ages  the  social  history 
of  Europe  might  have  been  Asiatic  rather  than  Euro- 
pean. Once  again  we  discover  the  closest  contact.  For 
although  the  political  experiments  of  the  West  early 
betrayed  signs  of  new  ideas  concerning  human  liberty, 
yet  the  basis  of  Western  and  Eastern  civilisation  long 
remained  the  same,  and  that  basis  was  slavery.  During 
many  ages  Europe  and  Asia  exchanged  millions  of  slaves. 
It  is__^recisely  in  the  struggle  for  freedom  that  we  find 
some  sense  of  unity  amld~^F"confusion__of  the  ancient 
worTHT  We  certalnI^^3^~liot~find  it_jn_Tacral  relations, 
since  memEers  of  the  same  race  were  frequently  at  war. 
And,  in  spite  oF  mutual  borrowings,  we  do  not  find  it 
in  their  Janguages,  their_politicmdeals,  or  their  religions. 
But  we  find  it  in  their  system  ol"  laboui\__^rhe  history 
of  humanity  is  mainly  the  history  of  labour,  and  at 
first  all  labouf'~wa5~^1avery.  In_^ts_eadi£sl__as__m  its 
latest  phaVes"'Tabour  has  presented  the  same  features. 
As  soon  as  jtjwas_  organised  JL  ^^aumed^jtEgTjfbrm  of 
slavery  throughout  the  ancient  world.  Slavery  was 
gradually  abolished,  and  to-day,  although  different  nations 
possess  difFerent_pohticaI  ideals^  thglr^lttd-ustrial  systems 
-  are  the  same. 

12.  The  record  of  the  great  social  experiments  of 
the  past  is  chiefly  a  record  of  injustice  and  suffering. 
It  is  also  a  record  of  the  disappearance  of  the  States  in 
which  those  experiments  were  made.     Perhaps,  therefore, 

were  not  a  Mongolian  race.  Some  of  the  local  names  in  Japan  still  in- 
dicate ancient  Aryan  settlements.  It  has  even  been  claimed  that  the 
Ainu  of  Yezo  betray  racial  affinities  which  connect  them  Avith  European 
rather  than  with  Asiatic  peoples.  Red  hair  and  light  skins  are  not  un- 
common. But  if  the  ancient  Ainu  were  Aryans  their  descendants  have 
suffered  degeneration,  since  in  some  respects  they  are  scarcely  human 
beings. 


INTRODUCTION  19 

we  shall  be  able  to  detect  some  relation  between  the 
causes  of  their  exhaustion  and  their  fall  and  the  defects 
in  their  ideals  of  justice.  In  the  second  volume  we 
shall  then  be  able  to  ask  to  what  extent  those  causes 
of  ruin  are  still  active  within  the  communities  of  the 
modern  world.  History  is  full  of  the  presence  of  a 
Nemesis,  whether  in  the  form  of  a  prolonged  decay  or 
a  violent  collapse  of  States.  Entire  civilisations  have 
perished  in  the  attempt  to  create  a  social  order  which 
appears  to  have  contained  only  the  elements  of  its  own 
disorder  and  dissolution.  And  although  modern  States 
are  apparently  more  stable,  we  cannotDetreve~that  the 
laws7^jhistory^lTave'~ceased  to  operate.  In  tlie  life  of 
nations  those  lawsTind  ^xpreSsron  in  long  processes  of 
collective  growth  and  collective  exhaustion.  At  no 
period  has  the  world  presented  the  spectacle  of  all  its 
States  enjoying  the  same  degree  of  vitality.  On  the 
contrary,  the  rise  towards  the  maximum  of  national 
energy  in  one  case  is  often  simultaneous  with  the  fall 
towards  the  minimum  in  another.  History,  as  well  as 
Nature,  displays  a  mysterious  economy,  and  whole  races 
may  lie  fallow  during  centuries  in  order  suddenly  to 
burst  into  vigour.  On  the  other  hand,  the  process 
of  organic  decay  appears  to  be  as  irresistible  in  those 
great  organisms  called  nations  as  in  the  most  minute 
forms  of  life.  Secret  causes  working  like  sappers  and 
miners  underneath  a  State  often  begin  to  show  the  real 
extent  of  their  devastation  only  in  the  moment  of  crisis 
and  attack.  Some  races  have  been  obliterated,  and 
others  have  been  broken  into  fragments  and  have  suffered 
so  great  displacement  that  we  are  frequently  unable  to 
trace  the  route  over  which  they  were  driven.  To-day 
the  territorial  division  of  the  world  is  utterly  different 
from  what  it  was  in  antiquity.  How  many  generations 
of    men    representing    how    many   different   races   have 


20  THE   NEMESIS   OF   NATIONS 

fought  for   the   possession  of  the   same  soil   which   re- 
mained permanent  and  fruitful  while  the.y  passed  away  ? 
And  yet  in  spite  of  the  perpetual  rearrajig£rnent_of  the 
woftd*s    mappthc — protteTrr"or'~tHeadjustment    of  _thc 
nations  towards^  each  dtTierTwhlcFls^thc^su^^ 
of'humamty7femlins7unch"ahgeaT2^T 
out~br~The " HlslnFutionljofJ^he'^or^^s^ealtir     The   , 
struggTe~Betwecrr"difTerent  racial  and  national  groups  is  \ 
really  only  a   larger  form   of  the   struggle  between  in-  / 
dividuals  within  the  groups.     For  just  as  the  wealth  of  I 
each  State  is  never  and  can  never  be  equalised  among  its) 
members,   so,   the   revenue   of  the   entire   world   is   un-l 
equally  divided  among  different  peoples.     It  is  at  this' 
point  that  we  begin  to  discover  how  closdy  the  internal\ 
happmess^of-a-'State^  depcnd^naporrtts' oiitward^reTations,  \^ 
and   how  the  fortunes  of  the  individual  are  bound   up 
with  the  fortunes   of  the   aggregate.      In  ancient   times 
slavery  was  the  means  of  the  production  of  wealth,  and, 
other  things  being  equal,  that  State  which  possessed  the 
greatest  number  of  slaves — in  other  words,  the  greatest 
number  of  the  implements  of  ancient  industry — was,  at 
least  temporarily,  the  most  prosperous.     Whereas  such 
a  system  involved  the  utter  absence  of  any  genuine  form 
of    cohesion    in    the    national    life,    it    is    precisely    in 
social  co-operation  that  modern  progress  best  expresses 
itself      Although    that    instinct    is    not    yet    and    may 
never  be  perfect,  nevertheless  //  undoubtedly  marks  the 
real  difference  between  the  ancient  and  the  modern  world. 
But  he  who  attempts  to  discover  an  ideal  goal  in  human 
history  could   never  rest   content  even  when  the  world 
contained  a  series   of  States   at   harmony  within    them- 
selves but  in  antagonism  with  each  other.     Just  as  the 
tragedy  of  national  life  consists  in  the  fact  that  in  the 
midst  of  wealth  there  persists  a  poverty — the   modern 
equivalent   of  ancient  slavery — which  helps   to  destroy 


INTRODUCTION  2 1 

and  degrade  the  nation's  manhood  and  diminish  its 
energy,  so,  the  tragedy  of  history  consists  in  the  fact 
that  although  the  world's  harvest  is  abundant  enough 
to  satisfy  the  needs  of  humanity,  its  reaping  is  regulated 
by  the  law  of  battle.  Hence  the  pressure  within  each 
State  is  aggravated  by  the  combined  pressure  of  all 
States  against  each  other.  The  moral  unity  of  man- 
kind is  therefore  still  only  an  ideal  and  not  a  reality. 
Nevertheless,  he  who  ponders  the  great  problems  which 
the  world's  history  presents  is  tempted  to  ask  whether 
it  is  not  possible  that  just  as  the  feuds  of  families  and 
of  clans  at  last  gave  way  before  the  idea  of  national 
unity,  so  the  feuds  of  nations  may  not  at  length  be 
silenced  in  the  combined  life  and  task  of  mankind. 
There  can  be  no  doubt  that  there  comes  a  time  when 
the  ideals  of  nationality  and  the  ideals  of  Humanity  are 
in  conflict.  But  the  achievement  of  national  is  only  a 
stage  in  the  achievement  of  international  justice.  The 
overthrow  of  nations  has  frequently  been  the  Nemesis 
which  awaited  their  refusal  to  co-operate.  That  was 
certainly  true  of  the  early  Aryan  tribes  of  Hindustan, 
of  the  Semitic  States  of  Western  Asia,  of  the  cities  of 
Greece,  and  of  the  ancient  and  the  mediaeval  com- 
munities of  Italy.  The  dilemma  which  History  places 
before  her  students  is  this  :  on  the  one  hand,  the  con- 
centration of  national  energy  is  indispensable  for  the 
work  of  civilisation ;  but,  on  the  other  hand,  that  con- 
centration not  only  creates  antagonistic  national  groups 
by  whose  conflicts  civilisation  is  imperilled  and  often 
destroyed,  but  creates  also  within  the  groups  antagonisms 
(jKJ  sufi^erings  which  sooner_or_later  findtheir  venjt__in_ 
revolution. 


2  2  THE   NEMESIS   OF   NATIONS 


BIBLIOGRAPHY 

De    Cara,    p.    C.    a. — Gli    Hethei-Pelasgi.       Three   vols.       Roma, 

1894-1902. 
Engler. — See  Hehn. 

Geikie,  Sir  A. — Text-book  of  Geology.     Two  vols.     London,  1903. 
Hehn,  Victor. — Kulturpflanzen  und   Hausthiere  in  ihren  Ubergang  aus 

Asien.      Berlin,  1902.      Schrader's  and  Engler's  edition. 
Huxley,    T.    H. — The    Aryan    Question    and    Prehistoric    Man.      The 

Nineteenth  Century,  November  1890. 
Mosely,  H.  N. — Notes  by  a  Naturalist.      London,  1879. 
Much,  M. — Die  Heimat  der  Indo-Germanen.     Jena,  1904. 
Neumayr,  M. — Erdgeschichte.      Two  vols.      Leipzig,  1887. 
Penka,  Karl. — Origines  Ariac^.     Wien  und  Teschen,  1883. 
Penka,  Karl. — Die  Herkunft  der  Aricr.      Wien  und  Teschen,  1886. 
PiCTET,  A. — Les    Origines   Indo-Europeennes.       Three    vols.       Paris, 

Reinach,  S. — L'Origine  des  Arycns.     Paris,  1892. 

Rendall,  G.  H. — The  Cradle  of  the  Aryans.      London,   1899. 

Ridgeway,   W. — The    Early   Age  of  Greece.     Vol.    I.     Cambridge, 

1 90 1. 
Schmidt,   J. — Die    Verwandtschaftsverhaltnisse  der  Indo-Germanischen 

Sprachen.     Weimar,  1892. 
ScHRADER,  O. — Prehistoric  Antiquities  of  the  Aryan  Peoples.      English 

translation.     Jcvons,  London,  1890. 
Seiler,  F. — Die  Heimath  der  Indo-Germanen.      Hamburg,  1894. 
Sergi,    G. — Origine  e    Diffusione  della    Stirpe   Mediterranea.      Roma, 

1895. 
SoLLAS,  W.  J. — The  Age  of  the  Earth.      London,  1905. 
Taylor,  I. — The  Origin  of  the  Aryans.      London,  1889. 
Taylor,  I. — The  History  of  the  Alphabet.     Two  vols.     London,  1899. 
Ujfalvy,   Ch.   de. — Apercpu   Gt^n^ral    sur   les   Migrations  des    Peuples. 

Paris,  1874. 
Ujfalvy,  Ch.  de. — Les  Habitants  du   Kohistan.      Revue  de  Philologie, 

Tome  IIP.      Paris,  1877-78. 
Van    den     Gheyn,     Le    R.    P. — L'Origine     Europeeme   des    Aryas. 

Paris,  1889. 
V15WA-M1TRA. — Les  Chamites.      Paris,  1892. 
Virchow,  R.  von. — Die  Urbevolkerung  Europas.      Berlin,  1874. 
Voyage  of  H.M.S.  "Challenger."     Two  vols.     London,  i88i. 
Wallace,  A.  R. — The  Malay  Archipelago.     London,  1890. 
Wallace,  A.  R. — Australasia.     London,  1888. 


CHAPTER   II 

HINDUSTAN 

In  the  modern  world  there  is  no  room  for  those  great 
racial  migrations  which  took  place  in  ancient  times. 
Modern  peoples  enjoy  fixity  of  abode,  whereas  in  earlier 
ages  actual  displacements  of  the  nations  occurred,  and 
whole  communities  were  on  the  march.  Even  in  his- 
torical times  those  movements  had  not  ceased.  Thucy- 
dides  points  out  that  the  early  Greek,  population  of 
Hellas  was  still  nomadic,  and  according  to  Caesar  the 
Celts  and  the  Germans  of  his  own  age  were  profoundly 
restless  and  moved  from  place  to  place.  As  late  as  the  fifth 
century  after  Christ  the  Huns  came  in  battalions  out  of 
Asia,  and  in  the  Middle  Ages  hordes  of  Mongols  pene- 
trated almost  into  the  heart  of  Europe.  If  we  might 
borrow  an  illustration  from  physical  science,  we  should 
say  that  the  molar  movement  of  mankind  or  the  move- 
ment in  masses  has  ceased,  but  that  the  molecular  move- 
ment or  development  within  the  mass  continues.  No 
doubt  volcanic  action  slumbers  in  human  society  as  in 
certain  regions  of  the  earth,  and  its  next  outbreak  can 
never  be  predicted.  But,  on  the  whole,  there  now  exists 
an  equilibrium  at  least  more  stable  than  was  possible 
during  the  first  stirrings  of  mankind.  The  human  race 
was  unable  to  settle  down  until  it  had  explored  the 
world's  geography,  and  had  satisfied  its  curiosity  by  a 
survey  of  the  earth's  surface.     That  survey  has  almost 

come  to  an  end,   and   the  world   is  now  divided  into 

23 


24  THE   NEMESIS   OF   NATIONS 

groups.  All  early  history  is  the  account  of  the  discovery 
of  sites  for  new  nations.  It  was  only  when  those  sites 
had  been  selected  and  when  frontiers  had  become  fixed 
that  the  peoples  subsided  into  habits  of  industry. 

2.  But  the  reasons  for  that  earlier  restlessness  were 
economic.  The  needs  of  tribes  increased  with  their 
numbers.  Industry  was  not  yet  in  being,  and  if  agri- 
culture existed  at  all,  it  was  of  the  rudest  kind.  There 
was  no  plough.  Man  had  not  yet  discovered  the  fields. 
He  was  ignorant  both  of  the  material  and  of  the  moral 
meaning  of  sowing  and  of  reaping.  Because  he  was  thus 
incapable  of  developing  land  he  soon  exhausted  the  wild 
crops  and  herbs  which  its  rough  state  afforded  him,  and 
he  was  compelled  always  to  move  on.  The  accounts  of 
early  humanity  are,  therefore,  full  of  this  search  for  new 
landscapes.  All  history  is  restless,  but  modern  nations 
are  really  sedentary.  Their  roots  grow  deeper  and  deeper. 
In  war,  for  instance,  it  is  not  the  whole  mass  that  moves, 
but  only  a  portion.  On  the  contrary,  the  early  tribe 
was  perpetually  mobilised  and  ready  to  start.  Its  fron- 
tier was  its  advanced  guard,  which  was  continually  shifting. 
For  man  was  a  traveller  from  the  beginning,  and  the 
rivers  were  his  first  guides.  He  saw  the  rivers  running, 
and  he  followed  them  over  the  earth.  Races  speaking 
kindred  languages  can  be  traced  along  the  banks  of  the 
Indus  and  the  Ganges,  the  Tigris  and  the  Euphrates,  the 
Danube,  the  Rhine,  the  Tiber,  and  the  Thames.  Man 
seized  upon  the  silver  threads  of  the  rivers,  and  they 
guided  him  through  the  scenic  "labyrinth  of  the  world." 

3.  We  are  able  to  trace  two  stages  in  the  human 
migratory  process.  First,  when  man  was  still  poor  in 
cattle  his  movements  were  more  sporadic  and  sudden, 
and  his  halts  were  less  prolonged.  There  was  nothing 
to  detain  him.  It  was  not  meant  that,  like  an  animal, 
he  should  call   a   lair   his   home.     Rather,   hunger  and 


HINDUSTAN 


25 


misery  drove  him  on,  and  his  first  roads  were  only  the 
tracks  of  his  prey.  Perhaps  it  is  well  that  so  thick  a 
veil  hides  from  us  that  scene  of  struggle  and  horror  in 
which  the  combatants  were  the  animals  and  man.  But, 
second,  his  growing  dominion  and  the  accumulation  of 
flocks  and  herds  created  the  need  of  some  kind  of  organi- 
sation. The  beginnings  of  pastoral  life  already  brought 
more  leisurely  habits  and  a  certain  sense  of  security. 
Any  tribe  which  discovered  a  well-watered  plain  would 
be  tempted  to  linger  at  least  as  long  as  the  surrounding 
country  supplied  their  cattle  with  pasture.  But  the 
longer  the  halt  the  greater  was  the  chance  that  a  wander- 
ing tribe  might  at  last  discover  the  productive  value  of 
land,  abandon  mere  pasturage  for  the  sake  of  some 
primitive  form  of  agriculture,  and  become  familiar  with 
the  idea  of  harvest.  The  invention  of  the  yoke,  and  the 
fact  that  the  ox  and  the  horse  could  be  harnessed,  must 
have  been  to  early  ages  an  event  as  important  as  the 
invention  of  the  steam-engine  to  the  modern  world. 
When  we  first  catch  a  glimpse  of  the  Aryans  who  con- 
quered Hindustan  they  are  in  the  midst  of  the  excite- 
ment of  such  discoveries,  and  are  pressing  into  the 
abundant  plains  between  the  Himalayas  and  the  Vindhya 
range.  Their  advance  is  marked  in  the  Vedic  hymns  by 
a  gladdening  sense  of  landscape.  Indeed,  the  fascination 
of  the  Vedas  consists  in  a  lyrical  appreciation  of  Nature 
and  in  their  singers'  joy  at  the  approach  to  new  scenes. 
The  snows  of  the  Himalayas  had  been  left  far  behind 
when  the  conquerors  entered  the  heat  of  the  Middle  Land. 
4.  Whence  had  they  come.?  Sometimes  a  single 
word  is  like  a  latchkey  which  opens  for  us  doors  which 
were  closed  and  at  which  we  had  knocked  in  vain.  Such 
a  word  is  the  Sanskrit  Himd,  winter.^    The  fact  that  that 

^  The  oldest  form  appears  to  be  Ghiam^  Iranian  Zyam.     Cf.  Spiegel, 
Arise  he  Periode,  p.  21. 


26  THE   NEMESIS   OF  NATIONS 

word  was  chiefly  used  in  reckoning  time  even  long  after 
the  Aryans  had  settled  in  India  is  of  great  significance. 
For  it  means  that  they  had  come  from  a  climate  in  which 
winter  was  prolonged.  In  other  words,  they  had  come 
from  the  north,  because  it  cannot  have  been  in  a  tropical 
land  that  they  became  so  impressed  by  the  winter's  dura- 
tion. Since  the  word  Himd  reappears  in  Himalaya,  it  is 
tempting  to  believe  that  the  conquerors  whose  conquest 
was  immortalised  in  the  Vedic  hymns  had  come  from 
the  great  Asiatic  highlands.  But  it  is  idle  to  attempt 
to  discover  the  exact  point  of  their  departure.  We 
know,  however,  that  it  was  not  east  of  the  Kabul  River, 
because  in  the  Vedic  hymns  the  advance  is  made  not 
from  the  Ganges  to  the  Indus,  but  from  the  Indus  to 
the  Ganges.  And  the  conquerors  did  not  arrive  from 
the  south — that  is,  from  the  sea — because  in  the  Vedas 
there  is  mentioned  only  the  rudest  kind  of  river-boat, 
without  mast  or  sail,  and  we  cannot  believe  that  in  a 
prehistoric  age  in  which  navigation  did  not  exist  a  multi- 
tude of  men  could  have  crossed  the  ocean.  There  is  no 
Poseidon  in  early  Hindu  mythology,  and  indeed  there  is 
reason  to  suppose  that  the  invading  race  had  never  seen 
the  sea.  Besides,  in  the  Vedas  the  line  of  movement  is 
from  north  to  south  as  well  as  from  west  to  east.  There 
remains,  therefore,  the  west,  which  has  so  often  been  the 
open  door  into  India,  and  all  the  evidence  points  to  the 
conclusion  that  the  people  who  called  themselves  Aryans 
had  come  from  Kabulistan.  But  we  can  trace  them  still 
further  towards  the  country  which  lies  south  of  the  river 
Oxus,  and  here,  in  Bactria,  we  discover  the  most  ancient 
abodes  of  a  people  who  likewise  called  themselves  Aryans. 
By  race,  by  language,  and  by  tradition  the  Aryans  of 
Iran  (ancestors  of  the  Persians)  and  the  Aryans  of  India 
were  closely  akin,  and  had  once  dwelt  together.  But,  as 
we  saw  in  the  previous  chapter,  the  lines  of  a  prehistoric 


HINDUSTAN  27 

racial  connection  ran  over  a  far  wider  area  and  reached 
Europe.  At  least  the  Aryan  language  extended  in  pre- 
historic times,  as  it  extends  to-day,  from  India  to  Ireland. 
Even  the  most  cautious  investigators  admit,  for  instance, 
that  the  early  Indian  and  the  early  European  name  for 
"  God "  had  a  common  root  and  a  common  meaning.-^ 
That  the  primitive  dictionary  of  Europe  was  fundamen- 
tally the  same  as  the  primitive  dictionary  of  a  great  part 
of  Central  Asia  remains  one  of  the  most  startling  facts 
in  the  history  of  mankind. 

5.  The  difficulty  of  the  problem  of  racial  distribution 
lies  in  the  fact  that  a  road  which  leads  east  leads  also  west. 
Were  the  people  who  spoke  Aryan  languages  in  Asia  emi- 
grants or  descendants  of  emigrants  from  Europe,  or  were 
the  people  who  spoke  Aryan  languages  in  Europe  emigrants 
from  Asia  }  The  problem  appears  to  be  quite  insoluble, 
and  the  controversy  it  has  raised  is  sterile.  No  one  be- 
lieves, however,  that  the  races  in  possession  of  the  Indo- 
European  language  extended  from  the  earliest  times  over 
the  immense  area  which  they  now  inhabit.  We  detect, 
indeed,  a  definite  racial  current  moving  westwards  into 
Europe,  and  another  moving  eastwards  and  southwards 
in  Central  Asia  ;  but  no  one  has  discovered  the  source  of 
both  streams,  and  a  great  gap  divides  them.  Migrations 
and  counter-migrations  had  probably  taken  place  ages 
before  any  human  movement  was  chronicled.  Those 
who  believe  in  the  European  origin  of  the  "  race  "  and 
the  language  with  which  we  are  dealing  point  out  that 
the  Asiatic  area  covered  by  peoples  speaking  languages 
akin  to  those  of  Europe  was  comparatively  small.  North- 
ern India,  Persia,  Armenia,  and  a  portion  of  the  Caucasus 

^  Gruppe,  p.  120.  Sanskrit  devd,  Latin  deus,  old  Irish  dia^  Norse 
tivar.  Sanskrit  dydiis,  Greek  Zeus,  Latin  Jupiter  {dydtis-pitd'),  Teu- 
tonic Tiu,  Zio.  The  root  div,  which  meant  "bright,"  "shining,"  was, 
as  Gruppe  points  out,  "  predestined  "  to  become  the  basis  of  the  concep- 
tion of  deity. 


2  8  THE   NEMESIS   OF   NATIONS 

form   the   maximum   region   which   can   be    allowed    to 
the  Indo-European  languages  on  the  Asiatic  side.     The 
presumption    is,   therefore,   that    the    occupants    of   the 
smaller  area  were  only  offshoots  from  a  central  western 
stock.     In  other  words,  to  derive  the  European  languages 
from   the   kindred   tongues   of  Central   Asia   and   other 
isolated  districts  is  to  derive  the  greater  from  the  less, 
the  complex  from  the  simple,  and  such  a  method  is  con- 
demned as  unscientific.     Moreover,   the  greater  variety 
of  the  European  dialects  is  supposed  to  indicate  a  greater 
antiquity.^     This  argument  has  been  described  as  one  of 
genius,"  and  has  been  called  unanswerable.^    We  conceive, 
however,  that  the  answer  is  as  follows.     The  develop- 
ment of  the  greater  from  the  less,  the  complex  from  the 
simple,   is   the    law   of  organic    forms,   and   language   is 
peculiarly  organic.     The  area  of  England  is  small  com- 
pared with  the  combined  areas  of  the  United  States,  of 
Canada,  Australia,  and   New  Zealand,    in   all    of  which 
English  is  spoken,  and  yet   no  historian  of  the  future 
will  suppose  that  it  was  not  in  England  that  the  English 
language  originated.     Again,  although  plants  or  animals 
may  vary   indefinitely,   their  types   are   all   reducible   to 
simpler  species.     Indeed,  variation  implies  not   primary 
but   secondary   forms.     The    presumption   is,   therefore, 
that  the  more  exuberant  growth  of  European  languages 
rather  indicates  a  far  later  development.    Lastly,  the  argu- 
ment in  question  neglects  the  fact  that  in  Europe  the 
Aryan  language  was  imposed  upon  non-Aryan  peoples, 
and   that,  for   instance,   the   divergence   between   Greek, 
Latin,  Celtic,  Teutonic,  and   Slavonic  may  well   be   ex- 
plained by  a  rich  admixture  of  foreign  elements.     If,  on 

1  Latham,  pp.  cxl.  et  sqq,     Cf.  "Elements  of  Comparative  Philo- 
logy" (London,  1862),  pp.  611  et  sqq. 
'^  Poesche,  p.  61. 
3  Taylor,  "The  Origin  of  the  Aryans,"  p.  20. 


HINDUSTAN 


29 


the  other  hand,  we  are  told  that  Sanskrit,  the  language 
of  the  early  Aryan  invaders  of  India,  is  less  archaic  than 
some  of  the  ancient  European  languages,  the  reply  appears 
to  be  that  archaic  forms  of  speech  are  often  better  pre- 
served in  younger  than  in  older  communities.  The 
French  which  is  spoken  in  Canada  has  retained  primitive 
idioms  that  have  disappeared  from  the  language  spoken 
in  France.  Even  if  the  attempt  to  reduce  the  antiquity 
of  the  Aryan  settlements  in  Hindustan  were  successful, 
the  belief  in  a  European  origin  would  not  be  made 
easier.  If  it  could  be  proved,  for  instance,  that  Hindu- 
stan was  first  conquered  only  as  late  as  the  seventh  cen- 
tury B.C.,  or  even  in  the  fourteenth,  we  should  expect  to 
find  traces  of  European  influence.  If  the  early  adven- 
turers from  the  West  had  really  been  in  contact  with 
European  peoples  on  the  Baltic,  we  should  expect  to  find 
that  they  had  brought  to  Asia  a  word  for  the  sea,  whereas 
there  is  no  such  word  common  to  both  branches.  And 
if  they  had  arrived  so  late  as  some  modern  writers  sup- 
pose, we  should  also  expect  to  find  equivalents  for  such 
European  words  as  salt,  mill,  and  arable  land,  but  those 
words  are  likewise  absent.^  One  of  the  main  arguments 
in  support  of  a  western  origin  for  the  Aryans  is  the  fact 
that  the  word  for  lion^  which  is  common  to  the  languages 
of  Europe,  has  no  equivalent  in  the  Aryan  languages  of 
Asia.  But  we  may  well  ask,  why,  then,  was  the  word 
not  brought  to  Asia  by  the  European  emigrants  }  They 
can  hardly  have  forgotten  it,  since  in  Asia  lions  were  to 


1  The  Sanskrit  djra,  which  is  the  equivalent  of  Greek  a'ypdr,  Latin 
ager^  means  only  pasture-land.  And  although  there  was  a  word  for 
grinding  {?nar),  it  had  not  yet  the  European  signification  of  grinding  corn 
(Schrader,  p.  285).  Salt  is  never  even  mentioned  in  the  earliest  Vedas. 
On  the  other  hand,  there  are  close  agreements  between  the  Indo-Iranian 
languages  for  such  words  as  "cornfield,"  "seed  corn,"  "sickle,"  "plough," 
and  "  wheat."  The  two  great  branches  of  the  Aryan  race  had  learned 
independently  the  fundamental  processes  of  agriculture. 


30  THE   NEMESIS   OF   NATIONS 

be  seen  in  plenty.^  Lastly,  the  fact  that  the  names  for 
such  trees  as  the  oak  and  the  beech  are  again  shared  only 
by  the  languages  of  Europe  may  be  explained  by  sup- 
posing "  that  the  Indo-Europeans  before  the  dispersion 
dwelt  in  a  thinly  wooded  region."  If  the  oak  and  the 
beech  are  European  trees  par  excellence^  there  is  little 
wonder  that  it  was  in  Europe  that  they  received  their 
names.  But  the  investigation  into  the  antiquity  of  the 
Aryan  settlements  in  Asia  is  of  far  more  importance  for 
the  discovery  of  a  primeval  racial  nucleus  than  the  ex- 
amination of  isolated  words.  It  is  admitted  on  all  hands 
that  the  Aryan  Indians  and  the  Iranians  once  formed  a 
single  people,  and  that  their  languages  were  organically 
related  to  the  languages  of  Europe.  Now  the  researches 
of  W.  Geiger  appear  to  have  proved  that  the  prehistoric 
seats  of  the  Iranians  cannot  have  been  anywhere  west  of 
the  Caspian  Sea.  Their  great  religious  book,  the  Zend- 
Avesta,  although  comparatively  modern  in  form,  is  by  no 
means  modern  in  substance.  In  the  opinion  of  some 
scholars  it  is  an  abridgment  or  recension  of  traditional 
religious  doctrine.  It  makes  no  mention  of  Medes  or 
Persians,  but  only  of  "  Aryans  "  ;  it  contains  no  historical 
reference  to  the  struggles  between  Media  and  Babylon, 
and  no  allusion  to  such  towns  as  Ecbatana,  Hecatompylos, 
and  Susa,  or  to  any  city  west  of  Ragha  and  Babylon. 
Moreover,  it  reveals  a  primitive  civilisation.  Salt,  glass, 
and  iron  were  unknown  to  the  Avesta  people,  and  there 
is  reason  to  believe  that  coined  money  did  not  exist  and 
that  payment  was  still  made  only  in  cattle.  Everything 
points  to  the  conclusion  that  the  Iranians  were  in  a  transi- 
tion stage  between  pastoral  and  agricultural  habits.  And 
in  spite  of  immense  borrowings  from  East  and  West,  the 

^  As  a  matter  of  fact,  Pauli  pointed  out  that  the  Indo-European  root 
liv  can  account  for  all  the  European  forms  of  the  word  {Die  Benennung 
des  Loiven  bei  den  Indogermanen,  Miinden,  1873,  pp.  i"]  et  sqq^.  Cf.  Van 
den  Gheyn,  pp.  15,  16, 


HINDUSTAN  31 

central  elements  of  the  Avesta  religion  appear  to  indicate 
that  the  land  in  which  it  first  arose  was  eastern  Iran,  that 
is  to  say,  the  region  from  which  the  Aryans  of  India 
had  likewise  come, 

6.  It  was  doubtless  the  shortest  and  the  easiest  road — 
in  other  words,  it  was  the  Khyber  Pass — which  the  earliest, 
like  many  of  the  later  invaders,  chose  for  their  descent 
into  India.     On  the   banks  of  the   Kabul   River,  three 
thousand  feet  above  the  sea,  they  passed  through  a  land 
which  yields  three  yearly  harvests,  and  they  must  have 
seen  wild   apples,  wild  grapes,  and  wild  plums,  cedars, 
tamarisks,  roses,  and  violets  growing  there  as  they  grow 
to-day.     But  a  rumour  of  even  more  fertile  soil  and  of 
gold  lying  in  the  plain  beneath  hastened  their  descent 
southwards,    and    soon    they    v/ould    be    addressing    the 
rivers  of  the  Punjab  as  "golden  bedded."^     If  we  do 
not  know  the  exact  region  whence  they  had  come,  we  at 
least  know  that  when   they  entered    India  they  were  a 
white  race.     Even  to-day  in  the  Himalayan  valleys  we 
find  tribes  speaking  Aryan  dialects  and  possessing  white 
skins,  ruddy  complexions,  and  often  flaxen  hair.     There 
is   the   clearest   evidence    that    the   people   who   became 
Indians  were  proud  of  their  racial  colour,  which,  how- 
ever, was  gradually  lost  under  the  sun  of  the  tropics. 
The  physical  difference  between  victors  and  vanquished 
was  noticed  by  the  soldiers  of  Alexander  the  Great,  and 
they  supposed  that  the  Aryans  were  Egyptians  and  the 
aborigines  Ethiopians.     According  to  Megasthenes,  the 
Aryans  were  distinguished  by  their  "  proud  bearing,"  and 
Arrian  tells  us  that  in  person  they  were  slender  and  tall 
and  of  much  lighter  weight  than   other  men.     In  the 
Vedic    hymns,   which    chronicle    their  victory,    there    is 
constant    scornful    reference    to    "the    dark    race,"   and 
Indra,    the    Aryan    sky   god,    is    described    as    fighting 

^  Rig- Veda,  x.  75,  8. 


32  THE   NEMESIS   OF   NATIONS 

against  that  race  on  behalf  of  his  "  white  friends."  ^  On 
the  threshold  of  Hindustan  a  distinction  was  already 
made  between  the  "Aryan  colour"  and  the  colour  of 
the  Dasyu  or  Indian  native.  The  word  Dasyu  or  Dasa 
meant  enemy,  and  it  was  probably  used  both  by  the 
Iranians  and  the  Hindus  to  denote  originally  a  Mon- 
golian people.  In  India  it  came  to  mean  everything 
that  was  opposed  to  the  language,  race,  and  religion  of 
the  invaders.  As  we  shall  see  later,  it  was  during  this 
invasion  that  the  foundation  of  the  great  system  of  caste 
and  slavery,  which  has  made  India  stagnant  for  ages,  was 
laid.  But  at  first  all  was  in  motion,  and  the  tribes 
cither  resisted  the  new  enemies  or  fled  before  them. 
That  the  conquest  was  not  easy  is  proved  by  the  frequent 
appeals  in  the  Vedas  to  Vedic  gods  to  destroy  "  the 
unbelievers,"  who  were  driven  eastwards  and  southwards 
until  the  whole  northern  plain  from  the  Indus  to  the 
Ganges  was  fit  to  be  called  Aryavarta,  the  land  of  the 
Aryans.  The  plain,  which  is  rich  in  rivers,  was  worth 
invading  because  its  area  contains  more  than  500,000 
square  miles,  and  it  is  the  most  fertile  and  most  famous 
of  Indian  lands.  We  do  not  know  how  long  a  period 
its  conquest  involved,  or  what  was  the  exact  route  of 
Aryan  expansion.  The  Vedas  are  silent,  and  present 
us  with  no  military  maps.  In  place  of  a  succession  of 
dates  we  have  only  a  succession  of  landscapes  in  the 
Vedas,  indicating  the  advance  into  inner  India  and  towards 
the  Ganges.  The  fact  that  there  are  no  names  of  towns 
creates  a  certain  sense  of  vagueness,  but  that  early 
villages  and  fortified  posts  existed,  especially  on  the  river- 
banks,  is  beyond  doubt.  There  must  have  been  a  con- 
tinual displacement  of  the  native  tribes,  and  a  seizure  of 
their  homesteads,  herds,  and  flocks.     Now  and  again  we 

^  Rig- Veda,    i.    100,    18.      "With   his    white   friends    he  won   the 
battle." 


HINDUSTAN  33 

see  as  in  a  flash  the  human  chaos  which  had  suddenly 
filled  India,  The  invaders  describe  themselves  and  their 
gods  as  irresistible,  and  Indra,  for  instance,  is  seen  gather- 
ing in  the  dark  race  by  thousands  "  like  a  gambler."  ^ 
He  brings  them  down  with  the  bow,  and  indeed  it  was 
the  bow  that  did  the  work  of  conquest.  For  in  one 
song  a  singer  says  proudly,  "  It  is  with  the  bow  that  we 
capture  oxen  and  with  the  bow  that  we  get  victory."  ^ 
At  the  head  of  the  invaders  marched  furious  gods. 
Single  lines  of  the  Vedic  hymns  chronicle  great  catas- 
trophes and  conflagrations,  for  the  tribes  were  actually 
burned  out  of  their  dwellings.  They  are  described  as 
fleeing  before  Agni,  the  great  Aryan  god  of  fire,  who, 
like  some  divine  incendiary,  let  loose  his  flames  in  India.' 
The  early  hymns  also  show  us  that  in  the  midst  of  this 
human  struggle  there  was  a  struggle  with  nature,  and 
we  seem  to  watch  hordes  of  men  laboriously  hewing 
their  way  across  the  continent.  How,  for  instance,  were 
the  rivers  bridged  .?  The  earth  is  invoked  to  be  kind,  to 
be  "thornless,"  and  to  ofi^er  shelter  especially  at  night.* 
Although  the  Vedic  hymns  are  full  of  the  spirit  of  victory 
and  fearlessness,  as  befits  an  Aryan  utterance,  they  also 
betray  a  sense  of  doubt  and  danger.  There  is  a  night 
prayer  to  be  delivered  from  the  wolf  and  the  she-wolf.^ 
And  in  one  striking  passage  the  wolf  is  described  as  lying 
in  wait  at  the  drinking  pools  to  seize  the  cattle  driven 
thither  by  thirst.  Although  the  tiger  is  not  mentioned, 
the  lion,  the  bear,  the  serpent,  and  the  jackal  are  all  known 
and  feared.  And  the  gods  are  called  upon  to  protect 
every  living  thing,  "  two-footed  or  four-footed,"  which 
sleeps  and  wakes  in  the  village.^  What  is  still  more 
remarkable  is  that  the  gods  are  sometimes  called  upon 

^  Rig-Veda,  ii.  12,  4.  ^  Ibid.,  vi.  75,  2. 

'  lbid.,vii.  5,  3.  *  Ibid.,  i.  22,  15. 

'J  Ibid.,  X.  127,  6.  *  Ibid.,  i.  114,  i. 

C 


34  THE   NEMESIS   OF  NATIONS 

to  protect  the  Aryans  from  each  other.  For,  although 
united  against  the  Dasyus,  they  were  early  at  war  among 
themselves.  They  thus  foreshadowed  in  the  East  the 
conflicts  which  later  would  break,  up  other  Aryan  com- 
munities, such  as  the  Greeks  and  the  Latins,  in  the  West. 
No  doubt  among  the  Vedic  tribes  we  find  in  one  instance 
as  many  as  five  peoples  in  alliance,  but  that  Aryan 
cursed  Aryan  is  proved  by  the  fact  that  the  gods 
are  implored  to  destroy  rival  kindred.  The  Vedic 
hymns  contain  a  kind  of  rough  rehearsal  of  all  later 
struggles  and  tragedies  on  the  soil  of  India,  and  we 
even  find  expressed  in  the  songs  of  the  victors  the  fears 
of  to-day. 

7.  The  Vedic  peoples  had  ceased  to  be  mere  nomads 
long  before  they  entered  Hindustan.  This  is  implied 
in  one  of  their  words  for  a  community,  krshti,  which 
meant  "  those  who  used  the  plough."  In  their  sacred 
hymns  the  plough  itself  receives  frequent  praise,  and 
is  called  the  begetter  of  food.  Since  they  had  words  for 
cornfields,  sickle,  and  wheat,  great  progress  must  have 
been  already  made  in  agriculture.  Moreover,  stones  were 
used  in  grinding  corn.  Whether  used  for  pastoral  or 
agricultural  purposes,  the  fertile  lands  lying  between  the 
rivers  were  called  ydvasa^  and,  in  the  opinion  of  most 
writers,  were  owned  by  the  community.  Individual 
property  in  land  was  unknown.  It  has  been  said  that 
a  system  in  which  groups  of  kinsmen  cultivated  fields 
in  common  cannot  be  described  as  agrarian  communism.^ 
But  it  is  uncommonly  like  it.  It  was  a  kind  of  subdivided 
communism.  And  if  it  be  admitted  ^  that  in  the  pastoral 
period  private  ownership  of  land  did  not  exist,  it  seems 

^  Fustel  de  Coulanges,  Questions  Hisioriques^  p.  92. 

*  Ibid.,  p.  19.  Fustel  de  Coulanges  appears  to  weaken  his  position 
in  the  following  sentence  :  "  Nous  ne  prdtendons  pas  qu'il  soil  interdit 
de  croire  k  une  communaute  primitive"  (ibid.,  p.  115). 


HINDUSTAN  35 

almost  certain  that  when  the  community  became  sedentary 
the  older  system  must  have  lingered  during  many  gene- 
rations. Thus  in  the  ownership  by  groups  we  should 
probably  see  the  middle  stage  of  transition  from  tribal 
to  private  ownership.  Just  as  the  produce  of  the  chase 
had  been  shared  by  those  who  had  hunted  together,  the 
harvest  was  at  first  shared  by  those  who  had  tilled  the 
land.  Family  property  took  the  form  of  houses  and 
cattle,  although,  even  in  this  case,  the  house  father  was 
only  a  trustee,  and  could  not  alienate  any  part  of  his 
wealth.^  That  the  struggle  for  cattle  rather  than  for 
arable  land  had  begun  early,  and  had  been  fierce,  receives 
striking  confirmation  in  the  fact  that  a  word  {gdvishti) 
which  originally  meant  "desire  for  cows"  passed  into  a 
word  for  war.^  Long  after  the  Indian  Aryans  had  ceased 
to  be  mere  herdsmen  they  continued  to  sing  the  praises  of 
oxen.  Milk  played  an  important  part  in  their  diet  and 
their  ritual.  The  cow  is  declared  to  make  a  house 
happy,  and  the  gods  are  implored  to  increase  the  Aryan 
herds.  It  was,  indeed,  only  in  cattle  that  the  natives 
were  rich,  and  their  flocks  therefore  fell  to  the  victors. 
Although  coined  money  already  existed  in  the  Vedic 
age,^  barter  was  the  chief  form  of  trade,  and  the  cow 
was  the  measure  of  value.  Goats,  sheep,  and  even 
horses  were  exchanged  according  to  the  market  price  of 
a  cow.  There  is  an  amusing  passage  in  which  a  keen 
salesman  congratulates  himself  that  he  had  returned  from 
the  market  without  having  sold  his  goods,  since  the  price 
offered  had  been  so  poor.*  The  Aryans  had  thus  brought 
commercial  habits  into  India,  and  there  is  evidence  that 
they  even  carried  on  foreign  trade. ^  Waggon-builders, 
plough-makers,  boat-builders,  weavers,  and  smiths  were 

^  Leist,  Alt  Arisches  Jus  Civile^  vol.  ii.  p.  171. 

^  Lassen,  815.  ^  Rig-Veda,  viii.  78,  2.  *  Ibid.,  iv.  24,9. 

'  Ibid.jiv.  25,  7  ;  V.  34,  7  ;  vi.  13,  3.     Cf.  Gruppe,  pp.  1-4. 


36  THE   NEMESIS   OF   NATIONS 

all  busy.  A  primitive  system  of  medicine  was  already  in 
existence,  and  herbs  were  used  as  amulets  against  disease. 
It  is  doubtful  if  silver  was  known,  and  lead  is  never 
mentioned  ;  but  copper  was  in  use,  and  gold  had  created 
excitement,  and  the  gods  were  asked  for  more  of  it.  We 
hear  of  golden  earrings,  bracelets,  and  cups.  If  gold 
appeared  in  the  form  of  coined  money,  it  was  in  danger 
of  being  lost  at  the  gaming-table,  for  gambling  is  men- 
tioned in  the  Vedas.  Music,  dancing,  and  chariot  races 
formed  part  of  the  amusements  of  the  people,  and  we 
even  catch  glimpses  of  an  early  vanity  in  statements 
concerning  "well-fitting  clothes."^  Such  facts  prove 
that  social  life  was  thoroughly  organised.  Centuries 
had  passed  since  the  folk  were  wandering  in  search  of 
a  home.  It  is,  for  instance,  deeply  interesting  that  one 
of  their  old  words  for  a  human  settlement  meant  only 
"  a  night  shelter,"  and  that  the  word  was  gradually 
abandoned  when  villages  were  built.  The  long  roads 
over  which  early  man  travelled  were  at  last  to  end  in 
hamlets  and  cities.  The  village  community  founded 
upon  blood  relationship  was  the  centre  of  Aryan  life. 
We  detect,  indeed,  in  early  India  that  social  and  poli- 
tical organisation  which  was  peculiarly  Aryan,  and 
reappeared,  with  the  same  features,  among  the  ancient 
Persians,  the  Greeks,  the  Latins,  the  Celts,  the  Teutons, 
and  the  Slavs.  That  system  may  be  described  as  an  aggre- 
gate of  clans  (vikes)^  with  independent  chiefs,  but  united 
for  war  under  an  elective  or  hereditary  king.  In  no  case 
was  the  monarchy  originally  absolute,  because  we  find 
invariably  a  common  legislative  assembly  {samiti)  which 
the  leaders  consulted.  The  political  divisions  of  all 
Aryan  communities  were  really  mobilised  battalions,  and 
their  civil  organisation  rested  upon  a  military  basis.  A 
combination  of  several  families  was  called  a  i^/'f,  a  word 

^  Suvasana,  surabhi.     Zimmer,  p,  262. 


HINDUSTAN  37 

which  spread  throughout  Europe,  and  indicated  the  clan 
villages  of  all  peoples  speaking  Aryan  languages.^  In 
India  each  community  had  its  common  council  or  sabha^ 
whose  deliberations  were  carried  on  by  the  heads 
of  families.  The  foundations  of  jurisprudence  were 
already  laid,  and  trials  took  place  before  the  assembled 
people.  Law  {dhdrma)  meant  that  which  was  fixed  and 
unalterable,  and  its  violation  (d'gas)  was  punished.  The 
"  straight,"  the  "  true,"  was  ritd,  with  which  some 
scholars  compare  Latin  ratio^  and  the  false  was  anrita^ 
the  irrational.  Murder  was  avenged  by  kinsmen,  and 
guilt  was  discovered  by  the  primeval  ordeal  of  fire.  The 
law  against  the  debtor  was  specially  severe,  and  the  bank- 
rupt was  fastened  like  a  criminal  to  the  stake,  where  he 
might  perish  by  thirst  and  hunger  unless  his  friends 
redeemed  him.  In  the  Vcdas  there  is  a  striking  re- 
ference to  the  guilt  of  the  gambler  who  brings  his 
family  to  ruin.  The  family,  indeed,  was  the  basis  of 
the  community,  and  precautions  were  taken  to  ensure  its 
stability.  The  idea  of  hearth  and  home  was  as  firmly 
established  in  those  early  Aryan  tribes  as  among  the 
ancient  Romans  or  the  modern  British.  Marriage  was 
a  sacred  institution,  and  the  bride  who  was  to  become 
"  the  lady  of  the  house  "  (paint)  was  first  betrothed  before 
the  sacred  hearth.  Doubtless  polygamy  but  not  poly- 
andry existed  ;  and  that  the  family  was  closely  and 
permanently  organised  is  shown  by  the  presence  of 
words  for  father-  and  mother-in-law,  and  brother-, 
sister-,  daughter-,  and  son-in-law.  In  strange  contrast, 
indeed,  with  the  storm  of  racial  hate  which  had  broken 
over  India  is  the  invaders'  sense  of  home  and  desire  for 
peace.  The  Indian  word  for  home  (damd')  spread  like- 
wise through  Western  Asia  into  Euope,  and  reappeared 

^  Zend  vis,  Greek  Flk,  Latin  vicus,  Insh/kh,  Coxmsh  givic,  Slavonic 
visgy  Gothic  veihs. 


38  THE   NEMESIS   OF   NATIONS 

among  the  Greeks,  the  Romans,  the  Irish,  and  the 
Slavs,^  and  it  has  aroused  passionate  affection  wher- 
ever a  people  have  become  great.  In  the  Vedas  we 
discover  traces  almost  of  a  modern  reverence  for  all 
that  it  means  in  the  life  of  man.  The  guardian  genius 
of  the  house,  Vdsto  Spati,  is  frequently  invoked,  espe- 
cially at  night,  when  protection  is  most  needed.  And 
when  that  watch  and  guard  is  assured,  then  the  house 
mother  and  the  house  father,  and  even  the  house  dog, 
sleep  in  safety.-  As  evening  closes  on  the  village  the 
cows  come  home  from  the  meadows,  and  we  are  re- 
minded in  one  of  the  hymns  that  since  the  cattle  have 
been  at  work  all  day  they  should  now  rest  in  the 
stalls.^  Even  the  eagles  sleep. ^  But  perhaps  the  most 
impressive  utterances  regarding  the  home  are  found  in 
those  hymns  which  are  addressed  to  Agni,  the  god  of 
fire.  His  name,  also,  early  appeared  in  Southern  Europe 
(Latin  igfjts)  and  among  the  Baltic  peoples  (Slavonic 
ogni).  Although  the  Indian  Aryans  do  not  appear  to 
have  possessed  household  gods  equivalent  to  those  of 
the  Greeks  and  the  Latins  (Hestia,  Vesta),  yet  in  their 
case  too  it  was  in  the  common  living-room  (agnifala) 
that  the  house  father  kindled  the  sacred  fire.  Its  con- 
tinuous burning  guaranteed  the  continuity  of  the  family. 
And  Agni  is  described  as  man's  guest  sitting  in  the  midst 
of  the  house.^ 

8.  Although,  however,  the  Vedic  peoples,  like  the 
Romans  and  the  Greeks,  possessed  household  altars  as 
soon  as  they  possessed  houses,  yet  the  gods  whom  they 
chiefly  worshipped   were   gods   of  the   sky.      Agni,  for 

*  Greek  Oo/ioj,  Latin  domus,  old  Irish  aur-dam,  Slavonic  domu.  The 
English  word  house  comes  from  the  Teutonic  hiis,  whose  origin  is 
uncertain  (Schrader,  p.  343). 

*  Rig- Veda,  vii.  55,  5. 

'  Ibid.,  vi.  28,  I.  *  Ibid.,  x.  127,  5. 

*  "  The  wonderful  guest "  (i.  44,  4  ;  i.  6g,  2). 


HINDUSTAN  39 

example,  had  condescended  to  dwell  with  men,  but  he 
could  not  be  imprisoned  within  any  house  or  even  within 
any  temple.  Only  the  open  vault  of  heaven  was  the 
temple  of  Vedic  gods.  Agni  was  everywhere,  in  plants, 
trees,  and  stones.  He  burned  through  long  nights  when 
the  sun  was  invisible,  and  was  thus  a  kind  of  proxy  of 
the  sun.  Moreover,  he  was  the  signal  of  the  abundant 
rains  which  fell  from  thunderstorms.  The  flame  upon 
the  hearth  was  thus  a  fragment  of  the  lightning,  since 
Agni  lived  in  the  clouds  as  well  as  on  the  earth.  Like 
Mitra  he  was  the  sleepless  god.^  The  Vedas  are  full 
of  the  sense  of  a  strange  mingling  of  the  powers  of  earth 
and  sky  {dydvd-prithivi).  Nowhere  has  the  religion  of 
nature  received  more  vivid  expression.  The  two  great 
forms  of  sky  powers,  (i)  solar  and  (2)  atmospheric,  fill 
the  singers  with  awe.  The  triumph  of  light  against 
darkness  and  of  the  fertilising  showers  against  drought 
are  the  subject  of  unwearied  praises.  Indra,  the  warrior 
god,  the  power  behind  the  meteoric  Presences  of  heaven, 
is  the  special  friend  of  man,  for  he  makes  the  sun  rise 
and  the  rain  descend.  And  in  no  poetry  is  there  so 
vivid  a  sense  of  morning.  Many  of  the  Vedic  hymns 
are  songs  to  sunrise,  and  it  is  fitting  that  they  should 
have  come  to  us  out  of  that  early  East.  It  was  not  yet 
the  age  of  symbolism,  for  the  gods  were  actually  identi- 
fied with  natural  forces.  The  poets  betray  that  longing 
to  understand  the  world  which  reappeared  and  found 
different  and  somewhat  sadder  expression  among  the 
early  philosophers  of  Greece.  Whereas,  however,  the 
destructive  power  of  fire  troubled  Heraclitus,  it  had 
no  terror  for  the  Vedic  thinkers,  who  found  even  "  the 
lightnings  laughing,"  and  declared  them  to  be  the  torch 
of  the  gods.  What  troubled  the  early  Aryans  was  not 
the  presence  but  the  absence  of  some  of  those  natural 

Rig- Veda,  iii.  2,  14  ;  59,  i. 


40  THE   NEMESIS   OF   NATIONS 

forces  whose  apparition  guaranteed  human  welfare.  In 
periods  of  great  drought  it  was  natural  to  long  for  the 
flash  in  the  sky  which  was  a  signal  of  coming  rain. 
Hence  the  poets  impatiently  ask,  where  do  the  lightnings 
abide  ?  ^  The  periodic  withdrawal  of  sun,  moon,  and 
stars  agitated  in  a  nafve  way  men  who  looked  to  the 
sky  for  help.  The  great  problem  was,  where  is  the 
sun  at  night  ?  Where  do  the  dawns  go  ?  Where  are 
the  waters  when  the  earth  is  parched .?  The  Indian 
firmament  was  anxiously  watched  as  men  watch  for 
omens.  The  Great  Bear  had  been  noticed,  but  the 
poet  asks  in  wonder  why  stars,  which  are  high  in  the 
heavens  at  night,  should  vanish  with  the  morning.  The 
answer  to  such  questions  was  twofold,  and  accordingly 
two  different  theories  concerning  the  gods  were  invented. 
In  the  first  place,  it  was  supposed  that  they  were  com- 
pelled to  fight  rival  demons  who  enjoyed  a  certain  share 
of  power,  a  kind  of  alternation  of  omnipotence.  Thus, 
for  instance,  the  dawns  are  in  prison  all  night ;  some 
evil  power  has  kidnapped  the  sun  ;  and  if  the  earth  is 
dry  and  the  crops  wither  it  is  because  Vritra,  the  demon 
of  drought,  has  stolen  the  waters  of  Indra.  Given  such 
a  view,  man  is  at  once  seen  to  be  the  ally  of  his  gods, 
encouraging  them  to  combat  the  evil  power ;  and  the 
meat  and  drink  of  the  sacrifice  are  actually  conceived 
as  strengthening  the  god,  Indra  or  Agni,  for  his  task. 
Moreover,  the  performance  of  the  ritual  is  believed  to 
hasten  those  processes  of  nature  necessary  for  human 
existence,  and  to  control  the  succession  of  the  seasons. 
At  the  altars  the  gods  are  man's  guests.  At  this  stage 
the  Vedic  singers  looked  their  gods  or  "  shining  ones  "  full 
in  the  face,  and  fear  was  almost  absent.  They  urge  the 
gods  to  act,  and  to  act  suddenly  and  bravely  against 
all  evil  Powers.     We  may  still  consider  the  Vedas  as  a 

^  Rig-Veda,  i.  105,  i. 


HINDUSTAN  41 

kind  of  bugle  songs  for  the  Aryan  race.  Their  energy 
and  intensity  seem  to  belong  naturally  to  that  branch  of 
humanity  which  has  borne  the  main  burden  of  civilisation 
in  the  East  as  well  as  the  West.  The  frequent  behest 
for  invigorating  seasons  may  indeed  indicate  that  the 
northern  race  had  very  early  begun  to  feel  the  effects 
of  that  climate  of  inner  India  which  would  gradually 
tamper  with  their  character,  and  make  them  too  at  last 
the  prey  of  new  invaders.  But  other  passages  reveal 
a  people  advancing  almost  recklessly  on  the  road  of 
conquest,  and  feeling  themselves  akin  to  their  own 
storm  gods  "who  shake  the  earth  like  a  speck  of  dust."  ^ 
The  imagery  which  they  transferred  to  the  divine  opera- 
tions was  na'fvely  borrowed  from  their  own  experience. 
The  sun  rolls  up  the  darkness  like  a  skin.^  The  sun 
is  in  a  golden  waggon.^  Unweariedly  the  poets  describe 
the  Indian  aurora,  for  the  glitter  of  morning  is  in  the 
Vedas.  Darkness  is  conceived  as  a  sea  over  which 
man  is  shipped  to  the  farther  shore,  which  is  the  thin 
day  line  in  the  sky.  Night  is  the  jailer  of  day,  but  at 
last  there  is  a  signalling  of  the  "  flags  of  the  morning,"  * 
and  dawn  comes  forth  again  decking  herself  like  a 
dancer.  Even  the  Aswins  or  morning  rays  are  personi- 
fied as  a  kind  of  golden  horsemen  riding  the  steeds  of 
morn.  But  no  religion  has  been  created  merely  out 
of  joy  and  light.  Rather  all  religions  have  come  out 
of  midnight  and  suffering,  and  their  history  is  mainly  the 
history  of  human  fear.  Hence  in  the  Vedic  system, 
as  in  the  kindred  religion  of  Iran,  there  is  also  expressed 
an  intense  feeling  of  the  dual  and  doubtful  character  of 
human  experience.  For  it  began  to  be  asked,  what  if, 
after  all,  the  gods,  of  their  own  free  will,  withhold  their 
blessings  from  men }      As  this  fear  took  possession  of 

^  Rig-Veda,  v.  59,  4.  '■*  Ibid.,  vii.  63,  i. 

'  Ibid.,  i.  35,  2.  *  Bergaigne,  vol.  i.  p.  244. 


42  THE   NEMESIS  OF   NATIONS 

the  worshipper  he  no  longer  looked  his  gods  in  the  face, 
but  began  to  prostrate  himself.  The  idea  of  atonement 
began  to  be  developed.  The  god  ceases  to  co-operate 
with  man.  From  being  an  ally  man  has  become  a 
suppliant,  and  the  sacrifice  is  now  expiatory.  When 
the  showers  are  withheld  and  the  crops  and  the  cattle 
arc  dying,  even  Indra  begins  to  be  suspected,  and  assumes 
the  role  of  a  punitive  god.  In  the  Vedas  sin  is  actually 
conceived  as  a  debt  which  requires  liquidation.  And 
there  is  a  remarkable  hymn  to  Varuna  which  has  the 
tone  of  one  of  the  penitential  psalms  of  the  Hebrews.^ 
The  fact  that  the  phallic  worship  of  the  Dasyus  is 
spoken  of  in  the  Vedas  with  disgust  and  horror^  is  no 
doubt  a  sign  of  the  genuine  superiority  of  the  civilisation 
which  had  suddenly  entered  India.  Nevertheless,  savage 
elements  lay  within  Vedic  religion.  There  arc  some 
dark  passages  in  the  songs  which  prove  that,  in  order 
to  appease  angry  gods,  even  human  sacrifice  was  offered.^ 
In  certain  rites,  for  instance,  man  is  numbered  with  the 
horse,  the  ox,  the  sheep,  and  the  goat  as  a  victim  ;  and, 
as  wc  shall  see,  this  monstrous  element  reappeared  late 
in  the  religions  of  the  West.  Again,  in  the  Vedas  every 
natural  effect  has  a  supernatural  meaning  and  is  the 
signal  of  friendship  or  of  hostility  to  man.  But  the 
effects  were  so  multitudinous  and  contradictory  that 
the  imagination,  baffled  and  dazzled,  began  to  sec  raging 
among  the  gods  a  conflict  similar  to  the  conflict  raging 
among  men.  For  instance,  Indra  not  merely  slays  his 
father  Tvashtri,  and  dethrones  Varuna  as  Zeus  dethrones 
Kronos,  but  he  is  in  conflict  with  the  Maruts  or  storm 
gods  who  were  his  lieutenants.  In  one  very  remarkable 
hymn  the  worshippers  are  troubled  by  the  fear  that  by 
sacrificing  to  Indra    they  may  offend   the  Maruts,  and 

^  Rig- Veda,  i.  25.  *  Ibid.,  vii.  21,  5. 

'  Ibid.,  X.  90,  15. 


HINDUSTAN  43 

that  by  sacrificing  to  the  Maruts  they  may  offend  Indra. 
"I  am  afraid  of  this  Powerful  one  (i.e.  Indra),  and 
trembling  before  him.  For  you  {i.e.  the  Maruts)  the 
offerings  were  prepared — we  have  now  put  them  away, 
forgive  us  !  "  1  In  the  last  sentence  the  distracted  wor- 
shipper whispers  a  kind  of  asi^e  to  the  storm  gods  in 
the  hope  that  Indra  may  not  hear  him.  This  hesitation 
as  to  the  proper  distribution  of  worship  has  followed 
the  human  mind  throughout  the  variations  of  its  idolatry, 
and  even  to-day  troubles  many  a  devout  Roman  Catholic 
in  the  adoration  of  his  saints.  But  it  was  precisely  be- 
cause worship  became  more  intricate,  and  because  ritual- 
istic error  began  to  be  conceived  as  involving  danger 
to  the  worshipper,  because  offence  to  the  gods,  that  a 
priesthood  arose  and  became  omnipotent.  And  with  the 
priesthood  came  caste  and  slavery. 

9.  We  may  well  believe  that  the  Asiatic  Aryans, 
like  those  European  peoples  who  spoke  kindred  lan- 
guages and  lived  under  similar  institutions,  possessed 
priests  or  Brahmans  from  the  earliest  times.  The  word 
Brahman  is  even  supposed  to  be  etymologically  equivalent 
to  the  Latin  flamen?  Whereas,  however,  the  Greeks  and 
the  Latins  separated  priestly  from  political  functions,  the 
Celts  and  the  Hindus  lived  long  under  theocratic  govern- 
ment. The  Brahmans,  indeed,  were  the  Druids  of  India. 
But  the  view  according  to  which  the  Vedic  hymns  were 
merely  the  expression  of  the  private  emotions  of  a  caste 
cannot  be  correct.  As  we  have  seen,  the  oldest  of  these 
hymns  arc  really  the  chronicles  of  a  race,  and  their  utter- 
ance is  far  too  massive  to  be  considered  as  the  work  of 
religious  dilettantism.  It  is  only  the  later  Vedic  litera- 
ture which  betrays  signs  of  artificial  creation,  but  the 
early  songs  were  sung  by  the  actual  leaders  of  the  people. 

1  Rig-Veda,  i.  171,  4. 

^  Wackernagel,  pp.  31,  32.    "  Es  gab  Brahmanen  bevor  es  Inder  gab." 


44  THE   NEMESIS   OF   NATIONS 

It  was  only  gradually  that  the  priesthood  developed  into 
a  close  bureaucracy  to  which  even  the  kings  were  com- 
pelled to  do  homage.  We  have  no  means  of  discovering 
either  the  date  of  the  Vedas  ^  or  of  the  rise  of  the  Brah- 
manical  tyranny,  or  of  the  origin  of  caste.  That  caste, 
however,  followed  the  conquest  there  can  be  no  doubt 
at  all.  Among  the  Aryans  themselves  there  was  origin- 
ally no  caste.  But  after  they  had  entered  India  a  new 
social  organisation  became  necessary.  A  system  for  the 
benefit  of  the  victors  at  the  expense  of  the  vanquished 
was  devised,  and  the  Dasyus  became  the  Sudras  of  the 
later  period.  It  is  impossible  to  believe  that  even  in  the 
earliest  stages  of  the  Aryan  conquest  the  relations  be- 
tween the  invaders  and  the  native  population  were  left 
indefinite.  The  religious  intolerance  of  the  hymns,  and 
the  fact  that  the  Dasyus  are  conceived  as  enemies  of  the 
Vedic  gods,  implv  that  from  the  beginning  the  rigour  of 
the  new  dominion  must  have  been  severely  felt.  Vdrna^ 
which  first  meant  the  dark  colour  of  the  native  peoples, 
later  meant  caste,  and  continued  to  be  used  in  that  sense 
long  after  the  invaders  had  ceased  to  be  a  white  race. 
There  is  a  hymn  which  indicates  that  a  social  hierarchy 
was  being  evolved  at  a  very  early  date,  for  the  dawn  is 
described  as  wakening  the  various  [classes  of  men  to  the 
work  of  the  day,  and  the  last  to  be  mentioned  are  the 
servile  population.^  It  is  true  that  many  of  the  best 
authorities  believe  that  the  famous  hymn  in  which  the 
origin  of  the  castes  is  mentioned  was  a  fraudulent  and 
comparatively  modern  interpolation  for  political  pur- 
poses. But  a  custom  is  often  long  established  before 
its  origin  is  discussed,  or  its  justification  attempted,  and 

1  Oldenberg  (p.  i)  appears  to  place  the  date  of  the  earliest  hymns 
as  late  as  1200  B.C.  Even  if  this  date  could  be  proved  to  be  approxi- 
mately correct,  we  do  not  know  how  much  of  the  earliest  religious  litera- 
ture had  already  perished,  since  none  of  it  was  written. 

*  I.  113,  6.     Cf.  Ludwig,  vol.  iii.  pp.  211,  243. 


HINDUSTAN  45 

many  centuries  had  passed  before  Hindu  writers  began 
to  work  out  a  philosophic  explanation  of  slavery.^  There 
can  be  no  doubt  that  the  priests  early  separated  them- 
selves from  the  rest  of  the  people,  and  enjoyed  the  privi- 
leges of  their  position  as  mediators  between  gods  and 
men.  It  is  specially  significant,  for  instance,  that  sins 
against  the  gods  began  to  be  considered  as  sins  against 
the  priests.  The  Dakshina,  or  sacrificial  gift,  became 
more  and  more  prominent  as  an  indispensable  part  of 
the  ritual.  A  struggle  between  Church  and  State — 
if  the  phrase  be  permitted — can  be  traced  throughout 
the  Vedas,  and  Brahmanism  early  created  enemies  against 
itself  even  within  the  Aryan  people.  There  is  a  remark- 
able hymn  in  which  Agni  is  implored  to  protect  the 
altars  and  sacrifices  against  assailants  and  weavers  of 
spells.  Witchcraft  and  astrology  were  already  busy,  and 
it  became  necessary  to  protect  Vedic  religion,  not  only 
against  the  impure  worship  of  the  Dasyus  but  against 
rival  Aryan  theories  and  beliefs.  If  in  some  very  early 
period  each  father  was  priest  for  his  own  family,  it  now 
became  a  crime  for  any  but  a  Brahman  to  approach  the 
altars.  And  with  the  development  of  priestcraft  and 
of  ritual  we  discover  a  steady  intellectual  degeneration. 
The  lyrical  quality  of  the  Vedas  is  gradually  replaced 
by  a  dead  formalism  and  a  stagnant  orthodoxy.  The 
age  of  scholasticism  at  last  arrived,  and  indeed  there  is 
a  true  analogy  between  the  development  of  the  Christian 
Church  and  of  the  Hindu  hierarchy.  In  both  a  priest- 
hood became  omnipotent,  and  hindered  the  progress  of 
the  world.  The  priesthood  has  invariably  been  a  reli- 
gious syndicate  representing  vested  interests.  "  Thou, 
O  Agni,  protectest  on  every  side  like  well-stitched 
armour  the  man  who  gives  sacrificial  fees.  He  who 
puts  sweet  food   before   the   priests,   who   makes  them 

^  Cf.  the  Bhagavad  Gita,  xviii.  41. 


46  THE   NEMESIS   OF   NATIONS 

comfortable  in  his  dwelling,  who  kills  living  victims, 
he  will  reside  high  in  heaven."  ^  These  words  betray  the 
existence  of  a  dangerous  class  of  active  parasites  whose 
interests  had  become  opposed  to  the  interests  of  an 
entire  community.  The  subsequent  history  of  man- 
kind in  all  its  aspects  was  to  evolve  in  the  same  end- 
less cycle.  Loyalty  to  the  Brahmans  became  the  test 
of  orthodoxy.  In  the  later  Atharvaveda  recipes  for 
the  spiritual  life  were  replaced  by  recipes  for  the  "  Brah- 
mandana  "  or  dish  of  good  things  which  was  served  to 
the  priests  by  the  faithful.  Intellectual  sterility  had 
set  in,  and  instead  of  the  early  manly  songs  of  the 
leaders  of  the  people  we  are  given  dead  commen- 
taries. If  we  contrast  the  spontaneity  of  the  primi- 
tive Vedas  with  the  opening  of  Sankara's  commentary 
on  the  Ved^nta-Stltras,  we  shall  be  able  to  measure 
the  amount  of  change.^  And  yet  it  was  ages  before 
Sankara's  date  that  Buddha  had  attempted  to  transform 
Brahmanism  from  a  dead  to  a  living  religion.  The 
Brahmans  had  gained  the  hegemony,  and  threatened  the 
interests  even  of  the  warrior  and  the  mercantile  classes, 
but  their  quarrels  need  not  detain  us  here.  We  are 
more  concerned  in  the  fact  that  all  three  classes  were 
united  in  a  common  tyranny  over  the  Sudra  or  slave 
population. 

lo.  When  peoples  were  still  in  their  tribal  formation 
freedom  was  necessary  to  every  member  of  the  tribe. 
If  the  entire  community  required  to  be  mobile  no 
individual  could  be  fettered.  Herdsmen  must  be  at 
least    as  free  as   the  cattle   they  tend  and   follow  from 

'    I.  31; 

'  "It  is  a  matter  not  requiring  any  proof,"  says  Sankara,  "that  the 
object  and  the  subject  whose  respective  spheres  are  the  notions  of  the 
'  Thou '  (the  non-ego)  and  the  Ego^  and  are  opposed  to  each  other  as 
much  as  darkness  and  Hght  are,  cannot  be  identified"  {Veddnta-SAiraSy 
part  i.).     Philosophers  are  still  discussing  the  question. 


HINDUSTAN  47 

pasture  to  pasture.  And  even  in  the  industrial  organi- 
sation of  Rome,  when  slavery  formed  the  basis  of  human 
society,  the  shepherds  remained  comparatively  free.  Thus 
as  long  as  primitive  communities  were  mobile  they  en- 
joyed collective  liberty,  and  Rousseau's  rough  guess  was 
apparently  not  altogether  wrong.^  But  as  soon  as  men 
settled  upon  the  soil  and  consolidated  their  social  rela- 
tions a  new  era  began.  It  was  only  when  the  Aryans 
had  arrived  in  inner  India,  and  found  themselves  sur- 
rounded by  a  swarming  and  degraded  population,  that 
the  instinct  of  self-preservation  suggested  the  need  of 
a  rigorous  dominion.  The  conquerors,  conscious  of 
their  mental  and  physical  superiority,  displayed  a  horror 
of  contact  with  the  inferior  race.  In  order  to  tame  and 
organise  a  vast  aboriginal  population  they  determined  on 
their  social  subjection.  The  entire  people  were  declared 
to  be  the  slaves  of  their  conquerors,  and  a  religious 
dogma  was  made  the  basis  of  a  political  expedient.  "  O 
Soma  (the  Dionysus  of  the  Aryans),  give  us  riches  in 
gold,  in  horses,  in  cows,  and  in  meny  Here  it  is  evident 
that  the  traffic  in  human  beings  had  begun,  and  during 
centuries  it  was  to  provide  the  industrial  basis  of  civilisa- 
tion. Thus  in  the  Vedic  hymn  which  pretends  to  give 
the  origin  of  the  division  of  human  labour  we  are  pre- 
sented with  a  crude  myth  according  to  which  the  priest 
or  Brahman  issued  from  Brahma's  head,  the  Kshatriya  or 
warrior  from  his  arm,  the  Vaisya  or  husbandman  from 
his  thigh,  but  from  his  feet  the  Sudra.^  And  this  dogma 
was  made  the  basis  not  merely  of  all  sacerdotal  preten- 
sions and  privileges,  but  of  that  system  of  caste  which 
has  hypnotised  India  for  ages.  But  wherever  we  go  in 
ancient   history   we   discover   the  same   ground-plan   of 

^  "  L'hotnme  est  nd  libre,  et  partout  il  est  dans  les  fers  "  (Du  Contrat 
Social,  Bk.  I.  ch.  i.). 
"^  X.  90. 


48  THE   NEMESIS   OF   NATIONS 

human  society.  On  the  one  hand  there  is  a  free 
minority,  and  on  the  other  a  majority  enslaved.  We 
trace  the  slave  in  all  his  disguises  from  Asia  into  Europe 
whether  he  be  called  Sudra  or  helot,  servus  or  serf. 

1 1.  The  real  meaning  of  the  word  Sudra  is  unknown, 
but  it  is  supposed  to  have  been  the  name  of  the  natives 
of  Hindustan  and  the  Dekkan.  It  may  have  belonged 
to  the  tribes  first  conquered  by  the  Aryans,  but  was 
made  to  include  all  the  dark  races  upon  whom  the 
Aryan  yoke  was  placed.  It  was  the  duty  of  a  Sudra 
"  to  humble  himself  at  the  Brahman's  feet."  The 
Brahman  gained  his  living  by  his  priestly  office,  the 
Kshatriya  or  warrior  by  war,  the  Vaisya  by  trade  and 
husbandry,  and  the  Sudra  by  "servile  attendance."  The 
barriers  between  the  castes  were  insurmountable,  and 
the  penalties  for  any  attempt  to  overleap  them  were  of 
extreme  severity.  In  no  system  has  class  hatred  been  so 
thoroughly  organised,  for  pride  of  race  ceased  to  unite 
even  the  Aryans.  Society  was  split  into  isolated  groups. 
The  early  flexible  community  disappeared,  and  a  gloomy 
regime  took  its  place.  The  Sudra  was  forbidden  to  be 
instructed,  or  to  hear  the  scriptures,  or  to  be  present  at 
the  sacrifices.  All  that  he  touched  became  contaminated. 
He  was  so  low  in  the  scale  of  being  that  the  gods  refused 
to  speak  with  him.  When  a  priest  was  about  to  make 
an  off^ering  he  was  forbidden  to  converse  with  a  Sudra, 
and  was  compelled  to  communicate  his  orders  by  means 
of  a  third  person.^  Such  a  social  or  unsocial  system 
never  could  have  arisen  spontaneously  in  any  primitive 
society.  Caste  and  slavery  were  invariably  the  results 
of  conquest. 

12.  In  the  Laws  of  Manu  we  are  presented  with  a 
vivid  picture  of  this  social  organisation  of  early  Hindu- 
stan.     It  is  true  that  that  code  is  no  longer  considered 

^  Weber,  Indische  Studien,  Zehnter  Band,  p.  ii. 


HINDUSTAN  49 

to  be  as  ancient  as  the  first  Sanskrit  scholars  supposed. 
Some  of  them  did  not  hesitate  to  assign  to  it  the  date 
880  B.c/  Modern  investigation,  however,  has  proved 
that  in  its  present  form  the  work  is  the  recast  of  an 
earlier  version.  Some  writers  maintain  that  it  was  com- 
piled "between  about  i  a.d.  and  500  a.d."  ^  Both  the 
language  and  the  form  of  the  work  betray  signs  of  a 
late  development  of  Hindu  culture.  It  seems  to  have 
been  forgotten,  however,  that  this  fact  only  proves  the 
permanence  of  the  Hindu  system  and  the  long  con- 
solidation of  Brahmanical  tyranny.  Among  all  primitive 
peoples  their  earliest  laws  were  handed  down  not  in 
documents  but  by  oral  tradition.  Thus  the  date  of  the 
written  form  of  the  Institutes  of  Manu  was  certainly  not 
the  date  of  the  origin  of  Hindu  law.  As  a  matter  of 
fact,  in  the  book  itself  there  is  the  clearest  distinction 
between  "the  revealed  texts  and  the  sacred  tradition" 
(Manu,  i.  108).  The  present  text  was  not  certainly  the 
first,  but  the  best  and  clearest  statement  of  the  traditional 
law  and  custom.  Hence  the  more  modern  its  form  the 
more  ancient  is  its  substance.  The  geographical  allusions 
scattered  throughout  its  twelve  books  prove,  likewise, 
that  the  Brahmanical  system  began  to  operate  in  all  its 
rigour  only  after  the  Aryans  had  descended  into  India — 
in  other  words,  after  the  conquest.  The  question  of  its 
authorship  does  not  concern  us.  But  there  is  the  clearest 
evidence  that  the  work  is  a  restatement  of  traditional 
principles.  It  must  not  be  forgotten,  however,  that  the 
Code  of  Manu  did  not  apply  to  the  whole  of  India,  and 
that  in  ancient  as  in  modern  times  local  custom  was 
frequently  made  the  basis  of  legal  decisions.  Moreover, 
laws  stagnate  and  grow  obsolete  while  society  moves  and 
changes,  and  a  usage  may  have  died  out  long  before  the 
law    which    gave    it    expression    was    finally    expunged. 

^  Sir  Wm.  Jones,  vol,  ii.  p.  ii.  ^  Burnell,  p.  24. 

D 


50  THE   NEMESIS   OF   NATIONS 

Nevertheless,  whether  the  Code  of  Manu  belongs  to  a 
more  modern  or  to  a  more  ancient  date,  the  state  of 
society  which  it  depicts  was  once  actually  realised. 
Wherever  there  were  Sudras  they  were  treated  in  the 
manner  it  prescribes.  And  the  most  modern  scholarship 
declares  that  those  portions  relating  to  the  castes  are  the 
recension  of  ancient  and  genuine  enactments. 

13.  According  to  the  Laws  of  Manu  there  are  slaves 
of  seven  kinds — (i)  he  who  is  made  a  captive  in  war,  (2) 
he  who  serves  for  his  daily  food,  (3)  he  who  is  born  in 
the  house,  (4)  he  who  is  bought,  (5)  he  who  is  given, 
(6)  he  who  is  inherited  from  ancestors,  and  (7)  he  who 
is  enslaved  by  way  of  punishment  (viii.  415).  These 
were  to  be  the  sources  of  slavery  during  many  ages,  and 
they  were  to  be  drawn  upon  in  every  part  of  the  world. 
In  Hindustan  as  at  Rome  slaves  could  hold  no  property. 
"  The  wealth  which  they  earn  is  acquired  for  him 
to  whom  they  belong"  (viii.  416).  Moreover,  "a 
Sudra,  whether  bought  or  unbought,  the  Brahman  may 
compel  to  work  ;  for  he  was  created  by  the  Self  Existent 
to  be  a  slave.  A  Sudra,  though  emancipated  by  his 
master,  is  not  released  from  servitude  :  since  it  is  innate 
in  him  no  one  can  set  him  free  from  it  "  (viii.  413,  414). 
When  the  Sudra  is  born  the  name  given  to  him  should 
express  something  contemptible  (ii.  31).  He  is  born 
only  to  serve  his  master.  "  One  occupation  only  the 
Lord  prescribed  to  the  Sudra,  to  serve  meekly  the 
three  castes"  (i.  91).  When  in  trouble  he  is  not  to 
receive  advice  ;  when  hungry  he  is  not  to  be  fed  ;  and 
he  is  never  to  be  educated  (iv.  80).  In  another  statute 
he  is  allowed  "the  remnants  of  an  Aryan's  meal"  (v. 
140).  This  is  his  reward  "for  living  according  to  the 
Law."  There  were  two  degrees  of  degradation.  The 
Sudra  was  regarded,  first,  as  general  representative  of 
his  class,  irrespective  of  his  master,  in  which  case  he  is 


HINDUSTAN  51 

the  abject  slave  of  the  higher  castes,  his  touch  is  un- 
holy, and  his  presence  an  abomination  ;  second,  as  the 
servant  of  a  particular  master  in  whose  house  he  may 
have  been  born,  and  whose  compassion  he  may  succeed 
in  moving  and  winning.  But  in  both  cases  the  Sudras 
were  in  perpetual  jeopardy,  and  were  outcasts  from 
justice.  Although  permitted  to  give  evidence  in  a 
court  of  law,  their  evidence  was  considered  to  be  of 
no  value  if  it  happened  to  be  impugned  by  a  member 
of  the  higher  castes.  Whereas  if  a  Sudra  committed 
a  crime  he  was  punished  with  ingenious  cruelty,  a 
Brahman  guilty  of  the  same  misdemeanour  was  discharged 
on  payment  of  an  easy  fine.  Again,  an  injury  done  to 
a  person  of  high  rank  was  penalised  by  the  utmost 
severity,  but  the  same  injury  done  to  a  person  of  lower 
rank  was  scarcely  punished  at  all.  This  principle  re- 
appeared and  lingered  very  late  even  in  Western  civilisa- 
tion. For  in  England  in  the  eighteenth  century  a 
crime  committed  against  a  nobleman  was  considered  by 
great  legal  authorities  like  Blackstone  to  be  more  out- 
rageous than  if  committed  against  a  person  of  humble 
rank.  In  Hindustan,  again,  whereas  a  libel  by  a 
Brahman  was  compounded  by  a  small  fine,  the  Sudra 
if  guilty  of  insult  was  condemned  to  have  his  tongue 
cut  out  (viii.  270).  In  Hindustan  the  entire  penal 
system  was  based  on  the  principle  that  that  member 
of  the  human  body  by  means  of  which  the  offence  had 
been  given  should  be  destroyed.  If,  for  example,  the 
Sudra  spoke  contemptuously  to  any  member  of  the 
upper  classes,  "  an  iron  nail  ten  fingers  long  shall  be 
thrust  red-hot  into  his  mouth"  (viii.  271).  And  yet 
the  language  of  the  Brahman  to  the  Sudra  possessed  no 
other  quality  except  contempt.  If  a  Sudra  "  arrogantly 
teaches  a  Brahman  his  duty  the  king  shall  cause  hot  oil 
to  be  poured  into  the  offender's  mouth  and  ears "  (viii. 


52  THE   NEMESIS   OF  NATIONS 

272).  Or  else  the  punishment  for  insolence  was  the 
removal  of  both  lips  (viii.  282).  But  if  a  Brahman  be 
guilty  of  insult  he  shall  suffer  only  "  the  lowest  amerce- 
ment "  (viii.  276).  The  hands  of  thieves  were  cut  off. 
A  Sudra  guilty  of  adultery  "shall  be  burned  on  a  red- 
hot  iron  bed  :  they  shall  put  logs  under  it  until  the 
sinner  is  burned  to  death"  (viii.  372).  On  the  other 
hand,  moral  irregularities  were,  within  certain  bounds, 
permitted  to  the  higher  castes.  In  short,  a  powerful 
minority  held  an  entire  people  in  shackles.  The  Sudra's 
social  condition  was  stagnant  and  hopeless  for  ever. 
The  colour  which  he  wore  as  symbolic  of  his  station 
was  black  (Krishna),  and  it  was  the  colour  of  his  destiny. 
Such  laws  indicate  how  great  had  been  the  accumulation 
of  wrong  and  how  degraded  had  become  all  social  instincts 
since  the  day  when  the  free  Aryan  communities  marched 
together  into  India.  The  reaction  against  the  doctrines 
of  Rousseau  blinded  his  antagonists  to  a  general  truth 
which  underlay  his  social  theory.  Dispassionate  inquirers 
have  since  discovered  that  humanity  has  been  required 
to  pay,  and  has  been  paying  for  centuries,  an  enormous 
penalty  for  the  acquisition  of  its  wealth  and  the  organi- 
sation of  its  labour. 

14.  It  was  early  in  history  that  a  grand  dilemma  was 
placed  before  mankind.  Either  men  were  to  wander 
over  the  earth's  surface  as  individuals  or  in  scattered 
families  incapable  of  union,  and  vowed,  like  the  animals, 
to  constant  decimation.  Doubtless  in  that  case  they 
might  have  enjoyed  the  wildest  freedom,  but  it  would 
have  been  the  degraded  and  precarious  freedom  of 
animals.  Humanity  would  have  become  a  mere  series 
of  stagnant  groups,  or  rather  there  would  have  been  no 
humanity  at  all.  Or,  on  the  other  hand,  the  forces  of 
cohesion  might  play  their  part ;  men  might  unite  in  order 
to   cope   with    nature    and   to    destroy   or    to   tame   the 


HINDUSTAN  53 

animals  and  to  clear  the  earth  for  a  human  settlement. 
In  that  case  freedom  would  certainly  be  restricted,  and 
social  subordination  would  become  necessary.  But  sub- 
ordination would  be  followed  by  insubordination,  and 
there  would  begin  that  conflict  of  wills  of  which  history 
is  the  actual  record.  Man  made  his  choice  wisely,  but 
as  soon  as  it  was  made  problems  were  created  which 
have  not  yet  found  their  solution.  A  hierarchy  of 
powers  became  forthwith  visible,  upper  and  under, 
stronger  and  weaker,  ruler  and  ruled,  victor  and  van- 
quished. Slavery  was  the  first  rude  discipline  in  that 
combined  labour  which  had  become  necessary  if  man 
were  to  be  capable  of  holding  the  place  which  he  had 
already  won  in  the  world.  It  is  really  doubtful  whether 
the  foundations  of  industry  could  have  been  laid  in  any 
other  way.  Standing  in  the  present  and  looking  back 
at  the  past,  it  is  easy  to  say  that  the  course  of  human 
history  might  have  been  different.  But  given  immense 
hordes  oscillating  over  the  earth's  surface,  plundering 
like  animals,  and  already  the  slaves  of  instincts  not  yet 
human,  we  may  well  ask  how  order  was  to  be  brought 
out  of  such  a  chaos.  Civilisation  begins  with  the  crack 
of  the  slave  whip.  It  was  the  first  frantic  effort  of  the 
human  race  to  organise  itself,  and  thus  history  presents 
us  with  a  great  problem  in  casuistry.  As  if  to  prove, 
however,  that  within  all  her  realism  an  idealism  lies 
embedded,  she  presents  us  with  contradictions  even  in 
her  rudest  phases.  We  are  startled  to  find  that  in 
what  must  have  been  a  terrible  age  the  human  mind  was 
actually  groping  after  justice.  And  in  digging  at  the 
roots  of  those  vanished  civilisations  we  have  to  remember 
that  mankind  had  only  emerged  from  chaos,  and  that 
one  day  our  own  social  system  may  be  judged  to  have 
been  relatively  as  imperfect  if  not  as  unjust. 

15.  There  appears  to  be  no  evidence  in  the  Laws  of 


54  THE   NEMESIS  OF  NATIONS 

Manu  that  the  Sudras  were,  like  the  Helots  in  Sparta, 
slaves  of  the  State.  Emigration  was  forbidden  to  the 
higher  castes,  whereas  Sudras  unattached  to  masters 
were  permitted  to  move  from  place  to  place.  But  this 
privilege  can  have  meant  nothing,  because  wherever  he 
went  the  Sudra  carried  with  him  the  bann  of  excom- 
munication from  human  rights.  It  has  been  said  that 
his  condition  was  more  endurable  than  that  of  the  public 
slaves  of  ancient  republics,  and  even  than  that  of  the 
villeins  of  the  middle  ages.^  Yet  if  it  were  possible  to 
devise  an  instrument  for  the  measurement  of  misery,  the 
sufferings  of  the  Sudra  would  certainly  be  found  to  have 
been  excessive.  It  is  at  least  true,  however,  that  the 
Sudras  possessed  rights  within  their  own  caste  and  claims 
against  each  other.  Moreover,  beneath  them  there  were 
human  beings  in  still  deeper  degradation. 

1 6.  There  was  no  fifth  caste,  but  the  lowest  level  of 
Hindu  civilisation  was  occupied  by  the  Pariahs  or  mixed 
offspring  of  the  Sudras  and  the  higher  castes.  In  the 
Laws  of  Manu  the  expression  of  horror  and  contempt 
for  this  breed  could  not  be  exceeded.  The  punishment 
inflicted  on  a  Sudra  who  loved  or  attempted  to  marry  a 
woman  of  the  higher  castes  was  of  the  utmost  cruelty, 
and  is  unmentionable.  Even  for  a  Brahman  who  married 
a  Sudra  woman  there  was  no  expiation  (iii.  19).  It  is  in 
the  Tenth  Book  of  the  Laws  that  the  most  extraordinary 
invective  is  poured  upon  the  outcasts,  who  are  described 
as  "the  lowest  of  men"  (x.  16).  In  order  to  keep  their 
own  physical  type  vigorous  and  pure,  the  Aryans  were 
tempted  to  drive  the  mixed  race  outside  humanity.  The 
Kand^la  was  the  son  of  a  Brahman  woman  and  a  Sudra, 
and  he  was  "  excluded  from  the  Aryan  community " 
(x.  30).  "  I  once  saw  a  high-caste  Hindu  dash  an 
earthen  jar   of  milk   upon   the   ground   merely   because 

^  Elphinstone,  p.  19. 


HINDUSTAN  55 

the  shadow  of  a  Pariah  had  fallen  upon  it  as  he  passed."^ 
If  such  an  incident  could  happen  in  the  nineteenth  cen- 
tury, we  can  imagine  how  bitter  must  have  been  the  fate 
of  the  Pariah  in   an   age   when  his   mere  existence  was 
considered   a   crime.     *'  Their  wealth  shall  be  dogs  and 
donkeys,"  says  Manu,  "  their  dress  shall  be  the  garments 
of  the  dead,  black  iron  shall  be  their  ornaments,  and  they 
shall  be  everlasting  wanderers"  (x.   52).     The  outcast 
was  "to  eat  food  in  a  broken  dish,"  and  to  be  employed 
in  the  burial-grounds  (x.  39,  54),     Such  passages  indicate 
that  a  vast  moral  problem  had  been   created,  and  that 
the  instincts  of  sex  had  overleaped  the  instincts  of  race. 
Nature  was  cunningly  attempting  to  efface  racial  diver- 
gences by  a  new  combination,  and  everything  is  explained 
when  we  hear  that  women  of  the  dark  race  entered  the 
houses  of  Aryans  as  slaves.     And  yet  in  the  history  of 
social  hierarchies  nothing   is   more  remarkable  than  the 
tenacity  with  which   the   Brahmanical  caste   maintained 
its  isolation  and  the  purity  of  its  blood.      No  doubt  the 
punishment  of  such  isolation  is  always  sterility,  but  we 
can  at  least  understand  the  motives  which  raised  artificial 
barriers  against  the  intrusion  of  lower  racial  influences. 
In  spite  of  the  elaborate  mechanism  of  precaution,  how- 
ever, silent  causes  were  already  at  work   stealing  away 
the  energy  of  the  Aryan  people.     Even  the  gods  of  the 
dark    race    began    to    win    their    way    into    the    Vedic 
Pantheon,  and  Siva,  the  god  of  passion,  as  well  as  other 
strange  gods  received  Aryan  worship.     The  atmosphere 
steadily  grew   more   gloomy   and   sultry.     As   mankind 
drew  closer  to  each  other  a  sense  of  mutual  suspicion 
began  to  develop.     There  are  some  striking  phrases  in 
Manu  describing  the  character  of  man,  who  is  declared  to 
be  the  possessor  of  "a  body  gloomy  with  passion  and 
perishable  "  (vi.  76,  77).     The  misfortunes  of  humanity 
*  "  India  and  the  Hindoos,"  Ward,  p.  259. 


S6  THE   NEMESIS   OF   NATIONS 

must  have  grown  apace,  else  this  curious  and  tentative 
theory  of  suicide  for  helpless  men  would  never  have  been 
suggested  :  "  He  who  leaves  this  body  (be  it  by  necessity) 
as  a  tree  torn  from  a  river-bank,  or  freely  like  a  bird 
that  quits  a  tree,  is  delivered  from  the  misery  of  this 
dreadful  world,  dreadful  like  a  shark"  (vi.  78).  The 
human  struggle  had  certainly  begun  in  earnest,  and 
already  there  was  almost  a  sense  of  exhaustion.  The 
whole  abundant  earth — Asia  and  Africa,  America  and 
Europe — lay  before  the  human  race,  but  ages  would  pass 
before  men  would  even  begin  to  ask  why  in  so  rich  a 
world  there  should  be  any  misery  at  all.  In  the  attempt 
to  produce  a  social  harmony  mankind  began  with  this 
scheme  of  discord.  Thus  in  the  early  history  of  labour 
we  catch  glimpses  of  a  being  "  dressed  in  the  garments 
of  the  dead,"  and  "eating  his  food  out  of  a  broken 
dish,"  overpowered  by  fatigue  and  maddened  by  in- 
justice. To  the  struggle  against  nature  was  added  the 
far  more  poignant  struggle  of  man  against  man.  And 
the  confused  experiment  of  the  nations  to-day  still 
betrays  the  long  lines  of  human  continuity,  and  is  handi- 
capped by  the  first  errors. 

17.  Nevertheless,  even  in  its  most  vindictive  stage 
human  nature  foreshadowed  the  route  along  which  it 
must  finally  develop.  The  Laws  of  Manu  would  be 
the  most  terrible  of  all  documents  unless  they  contained 
the  promise  of  more  ideal  conditions  which  even  yet 
are  unrealised.  It  is  not  the  function  of  the  historian 
to  attempt  to  reconcile  the  moral  contradictions  which 
he  discovers  in  the  civilisation  of  different  eras.  Rather, 
it  is  his  duty  to  emphasise  them  because  they  indicated 
the  need  of  progress  and  the  germs  of  justice.  Thus  in 
Manu  there  are  even  the  rudiments  of  a  theory  of  right. 
It  is  certainly  startling  to  discover  signs  of  the  clearest 
perception  of  individual  and  even  of  national  obligations 


HINDUSTAN  57 

side  by  side  with  expressions  of  racial  fury.  We  are 
told,  for  instance,  that  if  the  great  middle  class  and  the 
Sudras  beneath  them  "  swerved  from  their  duties  for  a 
moment  they  would  throw  this  whole  world  into  con- 
fusion"  (vii.  418).  The  modern  reader  is  surprised 
that  this  recognition  that  the  burden  of  the  structure 
of  society  was  being  borne  by  a  single  class  was  not 
accompanied  by  an  acknowledgment  of  corresponding 
rights.  On  the  contrary,  "the  Brahman  may  confidently 
seize  the  goods  of  his  slave"  (viii.  417).  Again,  the 
Sudra's  life  was  valued  at  the  price  of  a  cat,  a  blue  jay, 
a  dog,  and  a  crow  (xi.  132).  And  yet  '*  charity"  is  com- 
manded "  to  every  man  who  knows  the  Law  "  (ix.  202). 
Whereas  the  rate  of  interest  was  for  a  Brahman  two  per 
cent,  per  month,  for  a  man  of  the  warrior  class  three, 
and  for  a  husbandman  four,  it  was  five  for  a  Sudra. 
The  minds  of  the  early  lawgivers  oscillated  strangely 
between  injustice  and  justice,  but  now  and  again  they 
expressed  tolerant  and  even  humane  ideas  which  might 
find  a  place  in  later  ethics.  In  Manu,  for  instance,  there 
is  an  earnest  attempt  to  create  a  system  of  evidence  in 
order  to  discover  the  truth  in  disputed  cases.  There  is 
a  naKve  statute  relating  to  theft,  and  it  ordains  that  "  on 
failure  of  witnesses,  the  judge  shall  actually  deposit  gold 
with  the  defendant  under  some  pretext  or  other,  by  means 
of  spies  of  suitable  age  and  appearance,  and  shall  after- 
wards demand  it  back.  If  the  defendant  restores  it  in 
the  manner  and  shape  in  which  it  was  bailed,  there  is 
nothing  of  that  description  in  his  hands  for  which  others 
accuse  him"  (viii,  182,  183).  Men  are  forbidden  to 
do  injury  to  living  creatures.  They  are  warned  that 
"  the  only  friend  who  follows  a  man  after  death  is 
justice"  (viii.  17).  There  are  even  statutes  which 
modern  societies  might  imitate  with  advantage,  as,  for 
instance,    the    law    which    forbade    marriages    between 


58  THE   NEMESIS   OF   NATIONS 

persons  suffering  from  such  diseases  as  phthisis  (iii.  7). 
The  honour  and  safety  of  women  are  guaranteed  (iii. 
55,  56,  57),  Renunciation  and  the  control  of  the  senses 
are  enjoined.  "  Behaviour  unworthy  of  an  Aryan,  harsh- 
ness, cruelty,  and  habitual  neglect  of  the  prescribed 
duties  betray  a  man  of  impure  origin"  (x.  58).  The 
Aryan  nobleness  had  not  altogether  been  lost.  A  man 
is  encouraged  "  not  to  despise  himself  on  account  of 
former  failures :  until  death  let  him  seek  fortune,  nor 
despair  of  gaining  it."  (Was  the  Sudra  included  ?)  "  Let 
him  say  what  is  true,  for  that  is  the  eternal  law " 
(iv.  137,  138).  Finally,  chivalry  is  commanded;  in  war 
no  poisoned  weapons  are  to  be  used,  and  no  insults  are 
to  be  addressed  to  a  fallen  enemy  (vii.  90). 

18.  We  are  thus  able  to  discern  faint  rays  of  justice 
even  in  the  stormy  dawn  of  history.  In  the  later  litera- 
ture we  even  find  penitential  formulas  in  which  forgive- 
ness is  asked  for  sins  committed  against  Sudras,  but  such 
prayers  are  of  the  nature  of  a  deathbed  repentance.  As 
in  the  ages  of  chivalry,  courtesy  and  humane  treatment 
were  reserved  only  for  those  of  high  rank  while  common 
prisoners  of  war  were  treated  with  habitual  cruelty,  so 
those  chivalrous  precepts  of  Manu  were  never  meant  for 
the  Sudra.  That  the  enslaved  race  endured  oppression 
so  long  is  no  doubt  partly  to  be  explained  by  that  strange 
Oriental  passivity  and  fatalism  which  is,  in  some  measure, 
shared  by  only  one  European  people,  the  Slavs.  Cen- 
turies of  subjection  produced  that  vast  stupor  and  stag- 
nation from  which  India  has  not  yet  awakened,  while 
Russia  has  only  lately  moved  uneasily  in  her  sleep.  India 
has  never  been  a  unity,  and  has  never  possessed  a  political 
consciousness.  Her  movement  has  been  the  movement 
of  a  somnambulist  who  is  guided  by  other  hands.  Or  she 
has  been  like  an  exhausted  organism,  fed  artificially  with 
oxygen  from  without.     And  yet  a  means  of  deliverance 


HINDUSTAN  59 

was  offered  to  her  from  within  herself  long  before  she 
became  the  prey  of  successive  conquerors.  It  was  pre- 
cisely because  she  rejected  the  reformation  preached  by 
Buddha  that  her  inner  organisation  on  a  basis  of  justice 
became  impossible  and  that  her  conquest  became  easy. 
It  was  after  Buddhism  had  been  driven  out  that  the  great 
Mohammedan  invasion  began.  No  land  has  suffered 
from  such  a  rapid  succession  of  invaders,  and  the  cause 
is  certainly  to  be  found  in  that  social  system  of  which 
the  Laws  of  Manu  are  the  most  brutal  expression.  The 
Northern  Plain,  between  the  Himalayas  and  the  Vindhya 
range,  was  the  boulevard  of  conquest,  but  it  was  precisely 
there  that  Brahmanism  failed  to  create  the  forces  that 
should  have  withstood  invasion.  We  discover  within 
Hindustan  at  the  date  of  Buddha  two  great  social  facts 
which  reappear  in  every  civilisation.  Every  society  has 
been  founded  upon  labour,  and  has  invariably  tended 
towards  luxury.  It  is  in  the  distribution  of  luxury  and 
labour  that  all  social  problems  arise,  and  it  is  upon  their 
adjustment  that  the  larger  part  of  the  destinies  of  states 
depends.  Now,  the  Laws  of  Manu  indicate  the  growing 
antagonism  of  those  two  principles  and  the  social  dead- 
lock which  was  the  result.  In  other  words,  the  Hindu 
organisation  was  one  of  the  first  great  failures  in  that 
prolonged  social  experiment  in  which  the  world  is  still 
engaged.  A  society  so  constituted,  or  rather  so  dis- 
located, could  never  survive  its  own  inner  disorders  or 
the  attack  of  external  foes.  There  was  no  co-operation 
within  the  diverse  ruling  racial  groups,  and  there  was  no 
co-operation  between  them.  No  doubt  we  must  add  to 
the  causes  of  the  exhaustion  of  ancient  civilisations  the 
errors  of  their  economic  as  well  as  those  of  their  moral 
systems.  Who,  for  instance,  can  measure  the  frightful 
waste  which  primitive  methods  of  agriculture  and  trade 
involved  ^     But  since  that  handicap  was,  on  the  whole, 


6o  THE   NEMESIS   OF   NATIONS 

common  to  them  all,  it  is  rather  in  their  social  organisa- 
tions that  we  must  look  for  the  reasons  of  their  ruin. 
When  the  great  protest  of  Buddhism  was  made,  Hindu- 
stan was  divided  into  a  series  of  independent  despotisms, 
which  rested  upon  a  common  basis  of  slavery.  A  great 
gulf  was  fixed  between  the  governing  and  the  governed. 
Luxury  had  corrupted  the  one  class,  while  labour  and 
poverty  had  overwhelmed  the  other,  and,  exhausted  by 
these  unnatural  conditions,  both  at  last  fell  before 
the  invader.  That  is  the  fundamental  and  somewhat 
monotonous  truth  to  which  we  shall  be  compelled  to 
give  frequent  expression  in  these  chapters  devoted  to  the 
fall  of  States. 

19.  Like  all  great  moral  reformations.  Buddhism  was 
a  movement  away  from  tyranny  and  luxury  and  exclusive- 
ness  towards  liberty  and  co-operation.  With  its  purely 
speculative  and  religious  doctrines  we  are  not  here  con- 
cerned, but  we  may  note  that  their  peculiar  sadness  is  to 
be  explained  by  the  condition  of  Hindustan.  They  were 
the  outcome  of  a  vast  accumulation  of  social  pain.  The 
doctrine  of  Nirvana,  the  cry  for  delivery  from  existence, 
the  belief  that  man's  life  is  illusion  and  his  real  destiny 
emptiness,  were  all  the  natural  outcome  of  a  keen  sensi- 
bility brooding  over  the  woes  of  India.  Buddhism  was 
an  attempt  to  explain  the  tragedy  of  existence,  but  the 
tragedy  was  local.  It  was  specially  Indian,  and  arose 
within  a  society  founded  upon  such  legal  principles  as 
we  find  in  Manu.  Buddha  was  a  revolutionary,  and 
it  is  significant  that  his  awakening  was  first  caused  by 
the  spectacle  of  poverty.  No  doubt  there  had  been 
attempts  at  reform  before  his  day.  But  whereas,  for 
instance,  Kapila  had  been  content  to  develop,  still 
within  the  limits  of  Brahmanism,  a  merely  speculative 
and  rationalistic  doctrine,  Buddha  came  out  of  Brah- 
manism  in   order   to  face   the  people.      Unconsciously 


HINDUSTAN  6i 

or  not,  C^kyamuni  attacked  an  entire  political  system. 
The  fact  that  he  preached  is  of  great  significance.  No 
one  had  ever  preached.  It  was  the  first  great  appeal 
to  humanity.  The  gravest  charge,  indeed,  which  the 
Brahmans  advanced  against  Buddha  was  precisely  that 
he  sought  disciples  among  all  sorts  and  conditions  of 
men,  even  among  those  who  were  sunk  in  misery.  The 
beautiful  legends  which  gathered  round  him  prove  that 
it  was  the  common  people  he  had  most  deeply  influenced, 
because  he  had  first  been  touched  by  their  sorrows. 
Thus  it  was  said  that  once  lamps  were  lit  in  Buddha's 
honour,  but  that  while  those  of  kings,  princes,  and  the 
great  of  the  land  soon  went  out,  only  the  lamp  of  a  poor 
widow  burned  all  night.  Again,  Ananda,  the  disciple 
and  cousin  of  Buddha,  met  a  maid  at  a  well  and  asked 
her  for  a  cup  of  water.  But  she  replied  that  since  she 
belonged  to  a  low  caste  she  could  not  dare  to  offer  him 
a  drink.  "  My  sister,"  replied  Ananda,  "  I  did  not  ask 
to  what  caste  or  to  what  family  you  belong,  but  only  for 
a  cup  of  water."  Stories  like  these  prove  how  great  a 
revolution  had  been  created  by  the  genius  of  one  man, 
and  it  is  no  surprise  that  the  Brahmans  met  the  new 
Indian  evangel  with  persistent  persecution.  Buddha  gave 
special  directions  for  the  treatment  of  slaves.  When 
sick  they  were  to  be  freed  from  work  and  to  be  provided 
with  medicine,  A  new  life  had  been  made  possible  for 
the  Sudra.  "  When  the  master,"  ordained  Buddha,  "  has 
any  agreeable  and  savoury  food  he  must  not  consume  the 
whole  himself,  but  must  offer  a  portion  to  others,  even 
to  his  slaves  ;  and  if  they  work  faithfully  during  a  long 
period,  they  should  be  set  free."  He  announced  that 
his  law  was  a  law  of  grace  for  all.  "I,"  he  said,  "am 
the  master  of  compassion."  ^  It  is  certainly  difficult 
to  share  Vassilief's  scepticism  regarding  his  personal 
*  Burnouf,  Le  Lotus  de  la  Bonne  Lot,  p.  282. 


62  THE   NEMESIS   OF   NATIONS 

influence.  No  doubt  the  elaborate  development  of 
Buddhism  took  place  long  after  his  death,  and  its  late 
forms  in  Tibet  and  Ceylon  were  never  the  work  of 
Buddha.  Lamaism  was  practically  a  new  religion,  a 
kind  of  Asiatic  Catholicism,  with  monks  and  monasteries, 
mendicity  and  mendacity.  But  Buddha  was  something 
more  than  the  mere  founder  of  a  mendicant  brother- 
hood.^ What  Vassilief  calls  the  "  intellectual  organisa- 
tion "  of  the  system  marks  rather  the  beginnings  of  the 
system's  decline.  Buddha's  appeal  was  moral,  and  his  pro- 
pagandism  was  certainly  not  militant,  but  worked  silently 
like  a  leaven.  That,  according  to  Vassilief,  he  suffered 
persecution,  especially  towards  his  life's  close,  is  a  proof 
of  the  formidable  proportions  which  his  anti-Brahmanical 
crusade  had  already  attained.  To  have  been  able  to  re- 
claim a  great  portion  of  India  from  Brahmanism,  Buddha 
cannot  have  been  a  mere  figure  vanishing  before  the 
storm.  It  was  precisely  because  his  appeal  was  far  more 
moral  and  social  than  intellectual  that  it  was  feared  by 
the  Brahmans.  Whereas,  according  to  their  doctrine, 
which  was  really  a  political  system  in  disguise,  the  social 
order  should  be  fixed  and  unalterable,  Buddha  perceived 
that  that  is  true  of  nothing  in  the  world.  Not  im- 
mobility but  mobility  is  the  fundamental  fact  in  human 
as  in  all  other  things.  The  order  of  society  changes, 
and  the  hierarchies  of  one  age  disappear  in  the  next. 
Everything  is  passing  away  ;  everything  is  part  of  a  dis- 
appearing procession.  This  insistence  on  the  flux  of  life 
and  of  nature,  which  in  the  mouth  of  a  modern  moralist 
would  be  a  platitude,  was  in  the  age  of  Buddha  a  dis- 
covery and  a  challenge.  It  was  an  attack  upon  a 
hierarchy  which  had  supposed  itself  to  be  permanent 
and  impregnable.  But  it  was  neither  open  nor  direct. 
Buddha,  it  must  be  admitted,  made  no  definite  assault 

^  Vassilief,  p.  15. 


HINDUSTAN  63 

upon  the  dogma  of  slavery  and  caste.  No  more  did 
Christianity.  St.  Paul  took  slavery  for  granted,  and 
even  acquiesced  in  it.^  But  Buddha  said  that  caste  was 
a  matter  of  no  importance.  So  subtle  and  dangerous  a 
doctrine  involved  the  destruction  of  the  blasphemous 
fiction  which  had  separated  man  from  man.  For  that 
doctrine  was  a  humanism  in  which  all  social  differences 
were  lost.  The  fact  that  Buddha  accepted  disciples 
from  all  the  castes  was  sufficient  to  destroy  the  barriers 
which  divided  them,  because  there  was  thus  created  a 
higher  spiritual  unity  in  which  they  were  all  merged. 
The  true  Buddhist  contempt  for  the  old  hierarchy  is 
perhaps  best  seen  in  a  vigorous  denunciation  of  caste 
by  the  Buddhist  writer  Ashu  Ghosha.  In  an  argument 
directed  against  the  Brahmans  he  says  boldly:  "  The  doc- 
trine of  the  four  castes  is  false.  All  men  are  of  one  caste. 
I  never  heard  that  the  foot  of  a  Kshatriya  was  different 
from  that  of  a  Brahman  or  that  of  a  Sudra."  ^ 

20.  Buddhism,  however,  was  not  destined  to  be  the 
regenerative  and  cohesive  force  of  India.  That,  in  spite 
of  its  speculative  basis,  it  was  capable  not  merely  of 
genuine  social  amelioration  but  of  political  construction, 
is  proved  by  the  fact  that  the  dynasty  of  Chandra  Gupta, 
which  consolidated  Hindustan,  produced  the  Buddhist 
emperor  Asoka,  who  was  India's  most  enlightened  ruler. 
But  Brahmanism  was  never  really  overthrown,  and  in  the 
end  the  vested  interests  of  despotism  prevailed.  In  the 
eighth  and  the  ninth  centuries  of  our  era  so  terrible  was 
the  persecution  that  Buddhism  was  utterly  destroyed  ; 
although,  indeed,  its  destruction  was  hurried  by  its  own 
decay.  The  fact  that  the  history  of  Buddhism  in  India 
is  so  obscure  may  be  taken  as  a  sign  that  the  new  religion 

^  Cf.  Rom.  xiii.  5  ;  Eph.  vi.  5. 

*  "A  Disputation  concerning  Caste,"  translated  by  B.  H.  Hodgson 
{Essays,  p.  131). 


64  THE   NEMESIS   OF   NATIONS 

had  never  become  a  really  dynamic  element  in  Indian  life. 
No  Buddhist  emperor  appears  to  have  played  the  part 
of  Constantine.  And  although  Buddhism  became  a 
State  religion,  it  displayed  no  vitality  when  the  State 
became  hostile  to  it.  We  can  only  guess  that  in  some 
cases  the  doctrine  of  non-resistance  may  have  been 
actually  carried  out.  Unlike  the  Christian  Church, 
Buddhism  did  not  organise  itself  as  a  military  power. 
And  it  does  not  appear  to  have  possessed  the  moral 
strength  to  withstand  persecution.  This  collapse  of 
spiritual  forces,  whether  caused  by  outer  or  by  inner 
enemies,  is  the  most  tragic  fact  in  human  history.  A 
great  man  bequeaths  to  his  followers  a  doctrine  which 
gradually  dies.  The  one  great  moral  force  which  might 
have  made  a  nation  out  of  scattered  groups,  and  united 
them  in  face  of  the  invader,  was  irrevocably  crushed. 
Brahmanism  again  triumphed,  but  not  long.  At  the 
very  moment  when  Buddhism  was  being  driven  out, 
there  was  already  in  motion  a  power  which  has  left  the 
deepest  marks  of  conquest  upon  India,  and  that  power 
was  Mohammedan.  It  is  very  remarkable  that  the 
two  greatest  religions  of  Asia,  which  were  also  the 
two  greatest  regenerative  forces  in  the  world,  were  up- 
rooted from  the  soil  in  which  they  first  grew.  Just 
as  we  do  not  go  to  Palestine  in  order  to  find  the 
Christian  religion,  so  it  is  not  in  India  that  Buddhism 
can  be  any  longer  discovered.  Christ  passed  out  of 
Asia  to  become  a  Voice  in  Europe,  and  Buddha  was 
driven  from  India  into  other  lands  where  his  doctrine 
suffered  grotesque  change.  It  was  the  warrior  Mahomet, 
the  man  of  military  and  practical  energy,  who  made 
most  progress  in  Asia  and  became  Buddha's  formidable 
foe.  Yet  it  is  not  improbable  that  if  Buddhism  had 
been  allowed  to  cope  with  the  chaos  of  India  from  the 
death    of  Buddha   until    looo    a.d.    there    would    have 


HINDUSTAN  6$ 

arisen  a  great  people  who  would  have  withstood  not 
only  the  Tartar  and  Mohammedan  invasions  from  the 
north,  but  the  attack  of  Europe  from  the  south  and 
the  sea.  But  the  moment  for  the  creation  of  a  people 
had  already  been  lost,  and  when  the  day  of  danger  came 
India  was  split  into  helpless  groups.  No  doubt  men 
like  Chandra  Gupta  and  Vikramaditya  won  great  vic- 
tories, but  India  has  never  offered  widely  organised 
resistance,  Alexander  advanced  without  a  struggle 
into  the  Punjab,  and  Mahmud  and  Tamerlane  found 
the  road  as  easy.  What  interest  had  the  Sudras  in 
the  issue  of  battle .''  A  great  apathy  and  somnolence 
had  destroyed  all  energy.  A  nation  of  slaves  was  called 
upon  to  fight  a  nation  of  freemen,  for  the  Moham- 
medans were  free.  They  were  exempt  from  caste.  A 
people  governed  by  laws  such  as  the  Laws  of  Manu 
were  compelled  to  fight  a  people  whose  laws  were  so 
just  that  we  are  told  that  "  in  affording  strict  and 
accurate  definitions  of  the  rights  of  the  individual,  the 
three  systems  of  law,  Roman,  English,  and  Moham- 
medan, are  not  very  far  from  being  on  a  level."  ^  In 
other  words,  a  people  enjoying  a  certain  measure  of 
that  justice  for  which  Buddha  pled  conquered  India. 
How  momentous  the  result  of  that  conquest  was  des- 
tined to  be  may  be  measured  by  the  fact  that  to-day 
India  contains  62,458,077  Mohammedans.^  It  is,  how- 
ever, no  part  of  our  task  to  describe  the  invasions  which 
during  centuries  broke  upon  her  and  covered  her  like 
tides.  Enough  if  we  have  seen  the  reasons  why,  even 
to-day,  her  organisation  depends  upon  a  foreign  Power, 
and  why,  if  that  Power  were  withdrawn,  the  old  chaos 
would  return.  It  was  that  chaos  which  invited  attack. 
The  one  chance  of  inner  development  and  inner  control 
was  lost  when  the  reformation  of  Buddha  was  rejected. 

^  Mill,  vol.  ii.  p.  354.  ^  Census  of  the  Empire,  1906. 

£ 


66  THE   NEMESIS   OF   NATIONS 

Ever  since,  India  has  been  a  battle-ground,  and  the  world 
knows  that  it  will  be  a  battle-ground  in  the  future.  But 
there  seems  meantime  to  be  a  genuine  grandeur  in  the 
task  of  England  when  we  remember  that  she,  whose 
language  and  institutions  can  be  traced  to  centres  out 
of  which  the  institutions  and  the  language  of  India  s 
earliest  invaders  likewise  came,  has,  by  one  of  the  mys- 
terious cycles  of  history,  been  brought  three  thousand 
years  later  to  the  same  soil  in  order  to  create  a  cosmos 
out  of  the  chaos  of  ages.  For  the  problem  which  faces 
her  in  India  to-day  is  really  the  same  problem  which 
faced  the  Vedic  peoples,  only  it  is  vaster  because  volumi- 
nous with  centuries  of  error.  And  we  do  not  know  how 
her  task  can  be  fulfilled,  or  how  she  can  repair  the  damage 
of  innumerable  tyrannies,  unless  the  ideals  of  her  own 
Christ  and  of  Buddha,  the  Christ  of  India,  are  somehow 
united  in  her  government. 


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XXV.     Oxford,  1886. 
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Hardy,  R.  S. — Eastern  Monachism.      London,  1850. 

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Hodgson,  B.  H. — Essays.     London,  1874. 

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1 881. 
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68  THE   NEMESIS   OF    NATIONS 

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CHAPTER    III 

BABYLON 

Any  attempt  to  trace  the  continuity  of  human  history 
involves  some  explanation  of  the  great  gap  which 
separates  Aryan  civilisation  in  Hindustan  from  Aryan 
civilisation  in  Asia  Minor  and  in  south-eastern  Europe. 
But  that  gap  could  hardly  be  filled  merely  by  an  account 
of  the  Iranians,  the  Medes,  and  the  Persians — in  other 
words,  those  peoples  of  Aryan  race  and  speech  who 
remained  west  of  the  Indus.  Some  writers,  indeed, 
following  Berosus,  believe  that  the  region  of  the  Tigris 
and  the  Euphrates  was  under  Aryan  before  it  came  under 
Semitic  dominion.  But  there  are  no  data,  and  the  exact 
geographical  distribution  of  Asiatic  Aryans  beyond  the 
frontier  of  Hindustan  remains  unknown  to  us  until  the 
rise  of  Ecbatana.  The  real  historical  link  between 
Eastern  and  Western  civilisation  is  an  alien  Power,  and 
that  Power  is  Babylon. 

2.  Semitic  cities  had  already  grown  old  on  the  banks 
of  the  Euphrates  and  on  the  shores  of  the  Persian  Gulf 
long  before  the  Vedic  peoples  were  hovering  on  the 
threshold  of  Hindustan.  In  the  Rig -Veda  there  is 
frequent  mention  of  merchantmen  called  Pani,  who 
brought  trade  to  India,  and  they  are  supposed  to  have 
been  Babylonians.  And  we  arc  startled  to  find  that 
once,  although  indeed  only  once,  in  Vedic  literature 
the  gold  unit  of  Babylon,  the  maneh^  is  mentioned.^     To 

^  Rig-Veda,  viii.  78,  2 
69 


70  THE   NEMESIS   OF   NATIONS 

the  Iranians  the  city  was  known  as  Bawri,  and  her 
civiHsing  influence,  especially  in  the  form  of  the  cunei- 
form writing,  was  probably  felt  long  before  the  con- 
solidation of  the  Achasmenian  dynasty.  The  contact 
between  Aryan  and  Semitic  peoples  in  Western  Asia 
appears,  indeed,  to  have  been  frequent  and  close  in  pre- 
historic times.  That  they  had  known  each  other  before 
history  knew  either  of  them  is  proved  by  the  fact  that 
words  for  the  bull,  the  lion,  gold,  silver,  and  the  vine 
are  common  to  both.-^  But  we  do  not  know  what 
precisely  were  the  fortunes  of  the  Aryan  peoples  before 
some  of  their  powerful  groups  settled  on  the  highlands 
south  of  the  Caspian  Sea  and  organised  themselves  into 
nations.  Their  descent  into  the  valley  of  the  Euphrates 
did  not  take  place  until  Babylon  had  written  her  name 
deeply  and  vividly  in  the  annals  of  mankind.  During  a 
period  of  at  least  four  thousand  years  the  main  centre 
of  civilisation  was  not  Aryan  but  Semitic,  and  that  centre 
was  Babylonia.  On  the  other  hand,  two  of  the  most 
remarkable  facts  in  the  history  of  civilisation  are — (i) 
that  it  was  an  Aryan  by  blood  and  speech,  Cyaxares, 
King  of  Media,  who  destroyed  Nineveh  (606  B.C.)  ;  and 
(2)  that  it  was  another  Aryan,  Cyrus,  King  of  Persia, 
who  destroyed  Babylon  (539  B.C.).  The  destruction  of 
those  two  cities  opened  a  new  era  for  mankind,  and 
especially  for  Europe,  and  transferred  the  chief  dominion 
of  the  world  from  the  Semites  to  the  Aryans.  Even, 
however,    although    this    collision    between    Aryan    and 

^  Hommel,  Arier  und  Scmitcn,  p.   5.     The  remarkable   list  is  as 
follows  : — 


Aryan,  staura. 
„       karna. 
„       laiwan. 
„      gharata. 
„       sirpara. 

Old  Semitic 
» 

,  thauru. 
kar?iu. 
labiatu. 
charudu. 
t'arpu. 

Engli 

sh,  bull, 
horn, 
lion, 
gold, 
silver. 

„      waina. 

M 

wainu. 

wine. 

BABYLON  7 1 

Semitic  peoples  had  never  occurred,  the  story  of  Baby- 
lon could  not  be  left  in  isolation.  Rather,  the  history 
of  Europe  would  be  unintelligible  apart  from  the  history 
of  Babylon.  She  contributed  during  long  ages  the  main 
current  in  the  stream  of  human  affairs.  Compared  with 
her  duration  and  her  influence  the  Aryan  experiment  in 
Western  Asia,  although  dazzling,  was  brief.  No  doubt 
the  Persians  conquered  Babylon,  but  they  too  lost  their 
virility  as  quickly  as  their  kinsmen  in  Hindustan.  It 
was  not  to  be  on  the  lurid  soil  of  Western  Asia  but  in 
Europe,  and  at  first  in  Greece  and  in  Rome,  that  new 
Aryan  energy  would  awake. 

3.  But  the  part  played  by  Rome  in  the  West  had 
already  been  played  by  Babylon  in  the  East.  For  reasons 
which  will  be  explained  she  was  the  meeting-place  of 
rival  races.  Western  Asia,  indeed,  appears  to  have  been 
a  kind  of  clearing  ground  for  the  nations.  During 
centuries  a  re-shuffling  of  empires  took  place  in  the 
region  which  lies  between  the  Caucasus  and  the  Per- 
sian Gulf,  and  it  was  especially  in  the  valley  of  the 
Euphrates  that  the  human  race  first  endured  a  stern 
military  discipline.  The  more  we  know  of  Babylon 
the  less  we  become  surprised  that  she  did  cast  a  strange 
spell  upon  all  who  had  visited  her  or  had  heard  the 
rumour  of  her  streets.  She  threw  her  radius  far  over 
Palestine  and  into  Egypt  and  across  the  Mediterranean. 
It  appears  that  even  Sargon  I.,  her  political  founder,  had 
reached  Cyprus,  whose  inhabitants  paid  regular  tribute. 
The  Phcenicians  were  her  servants,  and  the  kings  of 
India  sent  her  gifts.  She  was  the  Brain  of  the  East. 
The  deeper  we  penetrate  her  history  the  more  we 
become  convinced  that  her  influence  was  immense,  and 
that  it  was  based  on  a  civilisation  which  reaches  back 
to  a  dateless  antiquity.  One  reason,  among  many,  may 
be  adduced  to  justify  such  a  conclusion,  and  it  is  that 


72  THE   NEMESIS   OF   NATIONS 

about  1500  B.C.  the  political  and  diplomatic  language 
of  the  entire  Orient  was  Babylonian.  The  official  letters 
of  the  Egyptian  kings  to  their  vassals  in  Palestine  and 
to  the  King  of  Babylon  are  written  in  the  Babylonian 
language.  But  such  a  fact  would  have  been  impossible 
unless  Babylon  had  become  the  centre  of  culture  and 
of  power,  and  she  could  never  have  attained  that  position 
without  ages  of  preparation.  An  immemorial  civilisa- 
tion lay  behind  even  her  first  appearance  in  history.  It 
is  not  too  much  to  say  that  by  means  of  the  excavations 
round  and  beneath  her  site  and  the  sites  of  her  vassal  cities 
the  length  of  human  history  has  been  doubled.  If,  as 
we  now  know,  "  there  existed  between  the  Tigris  and 
the  Euphrates  a  highly  civilised  nation  as  early  as 
5000  B.c.,"^  then  Greece  and  Rome  are  no  longer  the 
antiquity  of  the  world  but  its  middle  age. 

4.  There  are  reasons  for  believing  that  even  Egyptian 
civilisation  had  a  Babylonian  origin.  Fundamental  ideas 
underlying  the  mythology  and  the  art  of  Egypt  have 
been  traced  by  some  scholars  to  a  Chaldasan  source. 
For  instance,  the  word  Nun^  which  in  early  Chaldaea 
signified  the  divine  source  of  all  life,  also  appears  in  Egypt 
as  Nun.  The  name  of  Eridu,  the  primitive  seaport  of 
Chaldasa,  has  the  same  meaning  as  Memphis  ("  City  of 
the  Good  God  "),  and  points  to  kindred  religious  con- 
ceptions. Besides,  the  most  ancient  form  of  the  pyra- 
mid, a  series  of  steps  leading  to  an  apex,  is  found  on 
Babylonian  soil.  What  is  still  more  important  is  the 
fact  that  a  close  relationship  has  been  discovered  between 
the  earliest  form  of  Babylonian  writing  (which  was  not 
cuneiform  but  pictorial)  and  the  Egyptian  hieroglyphics.^ 

^  Radau,  p.  i. 

2  Hommel,  Ceschichie,  pp.  13  et  sqq.  Boscavven  points  out  ("The 
First  of  Empires,"  p.  94)  that  the  Babylonian  and  the  Egyptian  systems 
are  often  fundamentally  different,  as,  for  instance,  in  the  sign  for  water, 


BABYLON  73 

Such  facts  may  not  altogether  justify  the  opinion  that 
the  Egyptians  were  colonists  from  Chaldasa,  but  they 
at  least  indicate  a  startling  intimacy  between  the  two 
peoples  during  a  period  which  is  prehistoric.  Now,  the 
majority  of  modern  Egyptologists  believe  that  the 
Egyptians  came  from  Asia,  but  no  one  has  supposed 
that  the  Babylonians  came  from  Africa.  Therefore 
it  is  at  least  improbable  that  Babylonian  civilisation 
had  an  Egyptian  origin.  It  is  more  likely  that  both 
were  derived  from  a  common  and  still  more  ancient 
source.  But  in  any  case  Babylon,  when  she  was  at 
the  apex  of  her  power,  imposed,  as  we  have  seen,  even 
her  language  upon  Egyptian  diplomacy ;  and  later,  by 
means  of  Phoenicia  and  Egypt,  she  influenced  Greece 
and  the  Western  world. 

5.  But  if  she  thus  drew  even  distant  peoples  within 
her  orbit,  those  countries  which  lay  nearer  came  early 
within  the  current  of  her  magnetism.  There  was  a 
land  in  Southern  Syria  which  felt  the  thrill,  and  that 
land  was  Canaan.  The  most  recent  discoveries  have 
already  proved  that  if  the  modern  world  desires  to 
trace  to  their  source  many  of  its  own  fundamental 
religious  conceptions,  the  most  fruitful  road  of  research 
leads,  no  doubt,  through  Israel  but  ends  at  Babylon. 
When  we  remember  that  the  trade-routes  between 
Assyria  and  Egypt  cut  through  Canaan  we  shall  better 
understand  how  easily  a  trade  in  ideas  could  spring 
up  between  Babylon  and  Israel.  But,  indeed,  the  Hebrew 
history  itself  admits  that  Abraham  was  a  Babylonian 
and  dwelt  at  Ur  of  the  Chaldees.  His  language  and 
his  thoughts  were,  therefore,  Babylonian.     When  Israel 

which  in  Babylonian  represents  rain-drops  and  in  Egyptian  sea-waves. 
But  just  as  dialects  differ  from  each  other  although  they  may  belong  to 
the  same  family,  so  the  variations  of  early  hieroglyphic  systems  might 
be  explained  on  the  same  principle. 


74  THE   NEMESIS   OF   NATIONS 

was  still  young  Babylon  was  already  old,  and  it  is  not 
possible  to  believe  that  the  younger  people,  who  were 
originally  Chaldasan  colonists,  could  have  thrown  ofF 
the  habits  of  ages  or  have  remained  isolated  within  an 
area  already  full  of  tradition.  We  have  to  remember 
two  important  facts.  The  first  is  that  Babylon  was 
not  merely  polytheistic,  but  that  behind  the  changing 
multitude  of  her  idols  there  was  a  fixed  monotheistic 
belief.  In  the  second  place,  Israel,  on  her  own  confession, 
wavered  in  her  monotheism.  Her  religion,  indeed,  was 
the  result  of  a  struggle  between  opposing  forces,  and 
her  greatest  achievements  were  the  intensification  of 
the  monotheistic  idea  and  the  rejection  of  polytheism. 
But,  as  Sayce  remarks,  the  prayers  of  Nebuchadnezzar, 
King  of  Babylon,  prove  how  narrow  was  the  line  which 
divided  even  him  from  monotheism.  "  O  Lord,"  prayed 
Nebuchadnezzar  to  Merodach,  God  of  Babylon,  "  thou 
that  art  from  everlasting,  lord  of  all  that  exists,  for 
the  King  whom  thou  lovest,  whom  thou  callest  by 
name,  as  it  seems  good  unto  thee,  thou  guidest  his 
name  aright,  thou  watchest  over  him  in  the  path  of 
righteousness."^  Now,  Nebuchadnezzar  reigned  late  at 
Babylon  (604  B.C.-562  B.C.),  and  there  had  taken  place 
that  multiplication  of  gods  and  of  altars  which  invariably 
accompanies  a  rich  and  imaginative  mythology.  But  in 
the  penitential  psalms  of  the  Sumerians,  which  are  the 
earliest  expression  of  Chaldasan  faith,  we  find  even  a 
purer  monotheism.  Thus  in  a  strophe  and  an  anti- 
strophe  there  occur  the  following  words :  "  My  blas- 
phemies are  innumerable,  tear  them  like  a  veil.  O  my 
God,  my  sins  are  seven  times  seven."  ^  Delitzsch  cer- 
tainly cannot  be  accused  of  exaggeration  when  he  says 

^  Sayce,  p.  262. 

*  Lenormant,   Lettres  Assyriologiques,  Seconde   Serie,  vol.  iii.  pp. 

iS3,sqg. 


BABYLON  75 

that  those  psalms  breathe  the  same  spirit  as  the  psalms 
of  David,  and  yet  they  are  far  older.  On  the  other 
hand,  there  are  abundant  signs  that  early  Israel  had 
inherited  Babylonian  tradition.  The  biblical  account 
of  the  Flood  was  preceded  by  a  far  more  ancient 
Chaldasan  narrative.  The  legend  of  the  birth  of  Moses 
had  already  done  service  for  Sargon  I.,  the  political 
founder  of  Babylon.  The  word  Sinai,  so  organically 
connected  with  all  that  is  most  solemn  in  Hebrew  re- 
ligion, was  derived  from  the  name  of  the  Babylonian 
moon  god  ;  and  Nebo,  the  mountain  where  Moses  died, 
was  called  after  the  Babylonian  Mercury.  Besides,  as 
we  shall  see,  the  Laws  of  Moses,  if  not  actually  founded 
upon,  were  at  least  deeply  influenced  by  a  Babylonian 
code  whose  earliest  form  dates  from  an  age  in  which 
Israel  did  not  exist. 

6.  It  cannot  be  said,  therefore,  that  the  history  of 
Babylon  is  a  mere  matter  of  antiquarian  interest.  On 
the  contrary,  its  study  is  of  vital  importance  for  under- 
standing the  progress  of  the  world.  A  glance  at  her 
achievements  in  science  and  in  art  only  strengthens  this 
conviction.  It  was  in  Chaldaea  that  men  first  began  to 
study  the  stars,  and  the  Greek  astronomers  admitted 
that  the  Babylonians  were  their  masters.  The  Chaldaean 
priests  had  already  distinguished  the  fixed  stars  from  the 
planets,  had  correctly  calculated  eclipses,  and  had  seen 
the  satellites  of  Saturn.  They  had  worked  out  a  com- 
plex system  of  mathematics,  and  were  aware  of  the  pre- 
cession of  the  equinoxes.  That  they  possessed  some 
form  of  magnifying  glass  or  telescope  is  proved  by  the 
discovery  of  a  lens  among  the  Assyrian  ruins.  They 
invented  sundials,  and  their  method  of  measuring  time 
is  still  used  by  the  modern  world.  It  will,  therefore,  be 
allowed  that  when  we  reach  Babylon  we  are  on  the  high- 
road to  Europe.     Every  new  discovery  among  her  vast 


76  THE   NEMESIS  OF  NATIONS 

debris  is  a  gain  not  merely  to  local  but  to  universal 
history.  She  was  so  placed  between  India  and  the  Medi- 
terranean that  she  was  the  centre  of  the  world  and  at 
the  cross-roads  of  trade.  The  caravan  routes  from  the 
shores  of  the  Mediterranean  and  the  great  road  from 
India  through  Ariana  and  Hecatompylos  met  beneath 
her  walls.  She  was  the  Paris  of  the  East.  And  it  is 
little  wonder  if,  when  at  last  her  end  came,  a  cry  went 
through  the  world  which  had  feared  her,  "  Babylon  is 
fallen,  is  fallen  !  "  ^ 

7.  But  the  chief  reason  why  we  must  make  some 
attempt  to  understand  the  history  of  Babylon  is  that  it 
presents  to  us  in  a  ruthless  form  that  phase  of  social 
suffering,  known  as  slavery,  which  was  the  common  blot 
of  all  ancient  civilisations.  The  metropolis  of  the  Orient 
never  attained  her  magnificence  without  immense  physical 
labour,  and  so  far  as  her  Department  of  Public  Works 
was  concerned  none  of  that  labour  was  free.  She  was 
the  great  architect  and  engineer  of  the  East,  but  her 
palaces  and  her  temples,  her  walls  and  her  canals,  were 
the  work  of  slaves.  Each  brick  which  is  handled  with 
curiosity  by  modern  excavators  was  placed  in  position 
by  a  slave.  A  Hebrew  prophet  called  Babylon  "the 
hammer  of  the  whole  earth."  She  deported  and  en- 
slaved entire  communities.  Her  most  ancient  non- 
Semitic  name  was  Tintira,  or  "  The  Seat  of  Life."  But, 
as  if  to  prove  that  the  denunciations  of  the  visionaries 
of  Israel  were  not  too  violent,  her  own  monuments  and 
those  of  the  Assyrians  who  were  her  sons  have  made  us 
see  how  much  human  suffering  was  accumulated  round 
her  base.  Judged  by  her  waste  of  life,  she  seems  rather 
to  have  been  the  seat  of  death. 

8.  Long  before  a  brick  of  the  city  had  been  laid, 
there  was  a  reason  why  men  should  congregate  in  the 

'  Isa.  xxi.  9. 


BABYLON  77 

Land  of  Shinar.  It  was  not  merely  that  numerous 
important  centres  of  religion  and  of  trade  had  already 
been  founded  in  northern  and  in  southern  Mesopotamia, 
but  that  the  land  itself  invited  human  occupation.  It  was 
a  well-watered  plain  lying  between  the  mountains  and  the 
desert.  If,  indeed,  the  Euphrates  had  flowed,  as  at  one 
point  of  its  course  it  threatens  to  do,  into  the  Mediter- 
ranean instead  of  into  the  Persian  Gulf,  the  desert  would 
have  extended  as  far  as  the  banks  of  the  Tigris,  and 
although  there  might  have  been  a  Nineveh,  there  would 
have  been  no  Babylon.  It  is  because  both  the  Tigris 
and  the  Euphrates,  starting  from  the  same  region,  the 
Armenian  mountains,  and  meeting  at  the  same  goal,  the 
Persian  Sea,  enchain  between  them  a  tract  of  country 
which  they  continually  enrich  by  their  alluvial  deposits 
that  a  soil  was  created  which  became  the  envy  of  the 
world.  So  rich  was  the  land  that,  according  to  Quintus 
Curtius,  cattle  were  not  allowed  to  remain  long  at  pas- 
ture.^ It  is  the  touch  of  the  rivers  which  arrests  the 
advance  of  the  desert,  or  rather  converts  the  desert  into  a 
land  in  which  the  legend  of  Paradise  and  of  the  Garden  of 
God  arose.  At  some  points  the  desert,  consisting  of  gravel 
and  sand,  lies  only  about  thirty  miles  from  the  bed  of  the 
Euphrates,  but  between  that  river  and  the  Tigris  there  is 
a  region  long  famous  for  its  extraordinary  fertility.  It  was 
because  Babylonia  was  a  granary  and  a  site  for  an  empire 
that  the  human  race  crowded  into  it,  and  that  it  became 
the  most  densely  populated  district  of  the  ancient  world. 
Berosus  tells  us  that  it  abounded  in  wheat,  barley,  the 
date-palm,  apples,  and  most  kinds  of  fruit.  "  Of  all 
countries  that  we  know,"  says  Herodotus,  "  there  is 
none  so  fruitful  in  grain.  .  .  .  The  blade  of  the  wheat 
and  the  barley  is  ofter  four  fingers  in  breadth.  As  for 
the  millet  and  the  sesame,  I  shall  not  say  to  what  height 

1  Hist.  Alex.,  V.  i. 


78  THE   NEMESIS   OF   NATIONS 

they  grow,  though  within  my  own  knowledge  ;  for  I  am 
not  ignorant  that  what  I  have  already  written  concerning 
the  fertility  of  Babylonia  must  seem  incredible  to  those 
who  have    never  visited   the   country."  ^     Even   to-day, 
when,  owing  to  centuries  of  neglect  and  the  destruction 
of  the   canals,    the    land   has   lapsed    into  the  desert,  it 
suddenly  recuperates  itself  after  the  spring  rains  and  is 
covered  by  verdure.     So  thickly  grow  the  flowers  that 
the    hunting    dogs    are    compelled    to    force    their   way 
through  them,  and  when  they  issue  from  the  long  grass 
are  dyed  red,  yellow,  or  blue.^     But  in  her  climate  as 
in  her  history  Babylonia  was  the  land  of  sudden  change. 
In  spite  of  the   monotony  of  the   plain,  the  aspects  of 
nature    in    that    region   are  well    fitted    to   impress   the 
human  imagination.    In  spring  the  melting  of  the  snows 
on  the  Armenian  mountains  causes  the  Euphrates  and 
the  Tigris  to  descend  in   flood  and  to  spread  over  the 
country  like  a  sea.     It  is  no  wonder  that  in  such  a  land 
the    legend    of   the    Flood    was    conceived.      Until    the 
Chaldaeans  had   become   engineers  and  had   constructed 
canals    and    dykes,   they   lived    in   yearly   dread   of   the 
ruinous  overflow  of  the  rivers.     Hence  in  the  inscrip- 
tions of  the  Babylonian  kings  and  in  the  Code  of  Law 
frequent  reference  to  the  duty  of  repairing  the  dykes 
2250  B.C.    is  made.     Hammurabi,  King  of  Babylon,  and  probably  a 
contemporary  of  Abraham,  prided  himself  on  his  great 
engineering  works.    A  canal  bore  his  name.    "  I  guided," 
he  says,  "  the  waters  of  its  tributaries   over  the  desert 
plains  and  into  the  sandy  tracts.      I  thus  gave  perpetual 
streams    to    the   Accadians    and   the   Sumerians.   ...  I 
changed  desert  lands  into   fruitful  gardens,"^     Indeed, 
it  has  been  suggested  that  it  was  the  control  of  the  canal 
system  which  brought  political  authority  in  Babylonia. 

^  Bk.  I.  ch.  193. 

2  Layard,  "  Nineveh  and  its  Remains,"  p.  56  ;  ed.  1891. 

'  Oppert,  Hist.,  p.  36. 


BABYLON  79 

Whenever  the  central  power  collapsed,  the  whole  scheme 
of  irrigation  became  disorganised.  Like  the  Egyptians, 
the  Babylonians  were  compelled  to  undertake  vast  works 
for  the  proper  distribution  of  water  throughout  an 
immense  district.  Thus  multitudes  of  slaves  were  con- 
tinually employed  in  building  and  repairing  the  dykes, 
constructing  breakwaters,  and  making  lakes  for  the  over- 
flow of  the  rivers.  One  lake  was  twenty  miles  long, 
and  was  surrounded  by  a  wall.  The  land  on  the  east  of 
the  Euphrates  was  marshy,  and  the  marshes  were  lower 
than  the  river-bed.  To  prevent  a  loss  of  water  at  this 
single  point  locks  and  dykes  were  built  in  three  months 
by  ten  thousand  men.  The  more  we  read  history  the 
more  we  see  how  great  a  part  economic  conditions  have 
played  in  the  happiness  and  the  misery  of  mankind. 

9.  The  chmatic  conditions  of  Mesopotamia  are  such 
as  to  aggravate  the  hardships  of  labour.  The  desert, 
region  of  wind  and  sand,  was  visible  from  the  towers  of 
Babylon,  and  made  its  influence  felt  within  the  gates. 
When  the  whirlwind  advances,  carrying  with  it  clouds 
of  dust,  utter  darkness  prevails.  So  devastating  is  the 
hot  wind  that  when  it  blows  the  verdure  of  the  plain  is 
burned  up  in  a  few  hours.  The  desert  storms  are  seen 
advancing  from  a  great  distance,  and  as  they  pass  they 
leave  havoc  in  their  train.  This  sudden  and  anarchic 
element  in  nature  deeply  impressed  the  Chaldasan  mind, 
whose  conception  of  divinity  was  a  being  engaged  for 
ever  in  destroying  and  creating  anew  his  own  work. 
This  central  belief  served  likewise  as  an  image  not 
merely  for  the  operations  of  God  and  of  nature,  but 
of  man.  Nature  was  like  a  vast  web,  unwoven  in  the 
autumn,  woven  in  the  spring,  and  often  torn  like  a  veil. 
And  what  is  the  history  of  Babylon  and  of  man  but  a 
perpetual  weaving  and  unweaving  .?  The  Chaldasan  mind 
looked  towards  the  desert  stretching  westwards  like  an 


8o  THE   NEMESIS   OF   NATIONS 

arid  sea,  and  saw  in  it  not  merely  the  dwelling-place  of 
the  storm,  but  of  the  storm  demons  or  Lilla.  The 
Semitic  word  for  darkness  {ereli)  meant  also  the  west. 
It  is  from  that  word  that  our  own  "Europe"  is  derived, 
and  it  reminds  us  that  there  was  a  time  when  the  west, 
or  place  of  sunset,  was  the  great  Unexplored,  and  that 
the  desert  was  one  of  the  gates  which  led  to  it.  But 
although  she  sat  near  the  desert  and  not  far  from  the  sea, 
and  drew  from  both  the  sterner  elements  of  her  theology, 
it  was  from  the  sky  that  Babylon  received  her  strength 
and  her  faith.  The  heavens,  which  filled  the  Vedic 
singers  rather  with  joy  than  with  awe,  invited  the  special 
scrutiny  of  the  Chaldasan  mind,  which  was  profoundly 
analytic.  The  stars  played  a  solemn  part  in  Babylon's 
history.  It  was  the  genuine  conviction  of  her  religious 
leaders  throughout  many  variations  of  the  national  re- 
ligion that  the  stars  did  actually  keep  watch  above  her 
and  fought  for  her  in  their  courses.  In  no  part  of  the 
world  do  they  shine  with  such  brightness.  On  the  broad 
^lain  of  Chaldaea  the  entire  heavenly  hemisphere  was 
visible,  and  was  like  an  open  book  of  omens.  Whereas 
the  Hebrews  were  forbidden  to  look  too  much  at  the 
stars  (Deut.  iv.  19),  the  Babylonians  were  so  afraid  of 
neglecting  that  worship  that,  just  as  the  Greeks  raised  an 
altar  to  the  Unknown  God,  Z-^*?)' raised  altars  to  unknown 
stars.  The  entire  city  was  an  observatory.  We  trace, 
indeed,  in  the  religion  of  Babylon  a  deeper  imaginative 
element  than  in  the  Vedas.  Every  star  was  a  revelation. 
Every  city,  every  individual,  had  a  guardian  star.  An 
ancient  name  of  Larsa  was  "  City  of  the  Sun,"  and 
Sippara  was  dedicated  to  the  star  of  the  morning.  This 
naive  belief  in  stellar  influence — in  other  words,  the  pre- 
dominance of  astrology  over  astronomy — is  easily  ex- 
plained. Astrology  was  anthropocentric  astronomy.  And 
its  childish  faith  contains  at  least  this  core  of  truth,  that 


BABYLON  8 i 

since  every  part  of  the  universe  is  in  organic  relation 
with  every  other  part,  the  happenings  in  the  stars,  the  laws 
of  their  motion,  their  growth  and  their  decay,  do  affect 
the  ultimate  destinies  of  the  earth.  But  if  the  summer 
nights  at  Babylon  were  so  clear  that  all  the  stars  were 
visible,  her  day  was  hot  and  lurid.  According  to  Layard, 
Mesopotamia  is  parched  by  a  heat  almost  rivalling  the 
torrid  zone.  The  temperature  is  often  124°  Fahr.  in  the 
shade. ^  No  doubt  the  Semitic  race  at  length  adapted 
itself  to  such  a  climate,  but  the  thousands  of  captives 
deported  from  mountainous  regions  such  as  Elam  and 
Armenia  must  have  found  that  the  miseries  of  compul- 
sory labour  were  aggravated  by  the  suffocating  heat  of 
the  river  levels.  That  even  the  Babylonians  suffered 
from  the  heat  is  proved  by  an  inscription  of  Nebuchad- 
nezzar I.  (i  137  B.C. -1 131  B.C.),  in  which  it  is  stated  that 
during  a  military  expedition  in  the  month  of  July  "  there 
was  a  fiery  heat,  the  roads  were  glowing  as  with  flames, 
there  was  no  water,  the  wells  were  empty,  the  horses 
died  on  the  roads,  and  men's  hearts  failed  them."  In 
the  Code  of  Hammurabi  there  are  special  regulations  for 
the  price  of  beer  "  at  harvest,  in  the  time  of  thirst."  It  is 
said  that  in  Southern  Mesopotamia  camels  cannot  live,  and 
that  birds  are  seen  sitting  in  the  date-trees  about  Baghdad 
with  their  beaks  open  and  panting  for  want  of  air. 

10.  There  is  abundant  evidence  that  the  earliest 
Sumerian  settlers  found  the  process  of  acclimatisation 
difficult  and  dangerous.  A  whole  literature  devoted  to 
disease  was  discovered  in  the  ruins  of  the  palace  of 
Sardanapalus  (Assurbanipal)  at  Nineveh.  It  formed  part 
of  the  library  of  that  king,  and  contains  copies  and  trans- 
lations of  an  ancient  Sumerian  work  on  magical  medicine 
which  consisted  of  three  parts.     Its  formulae  are  of  pro- 

^  Hilprecht  gives  41°  Reaumur  {Die  Ausgrabungeti  im  BH  Tempel  zu 
Nippur,  p.  8). 

F 


82  THE   NEMESIS   OF   NATIONS 

found  interest,  not  merely  because  they  indicate  the 
struggles  of  the  human  mind  in  its  earliest  encounters 
with  disease,  but  because  they  throw  light  on  the 
conditions  of  human  life  in  a  dateless  age  of  the 
world.  That  a  king  of  Nineveh  caused  a  translation  of 
this  ancient  book  to  be  made  for  his  own  library  is  a 
proof  of  the  continuity  of  culture  and  tradition  which 
bound  Babylonia  together.  Both  Babylon  and  Nineveh 
looked  towards  early  Chaldasa  as  the  home  of  their  re- 
ligion and  their  science.  But  since  Babylon  became  the 
centre  of  the  entire  political  and  social  movement  in 
Western  Asia,  her  name  shall  be  used  in  this  chapter  to 
denote  a  civilisation  which  spread  far  beyond  her  own 
gates.  The  work  in  question,  therefore,  was  known  in 
Babylon  long  before  the  rise  of  Nineveh,  but  we  owe  its 
preservation  to  the  genius  of  Sardanapalus.  It  contains 
a  long  list  of  maladies,  but  makes  frequent  and  particular 
mention  of  a  disease  called  "  the  malady  of  the  head," 
which  seems  to  have  been  peculiar  to  the  climate  of 
Babylonia.  The  writer — doubtless  a  Magian — exhausts 
his  vocabulary  in  the  attempt  to  describe  its  symptoms. 
One  immense  formula  is  devoted  to  the  discovery  of  a 
remedy.  We  are  to  imagine  ourselves  in  the  sultry 
plain  of  Chaldaea,  at  least  five  thousand  years  before 
Christ,  and  during  the  visitation  of  a  pestilence.  The 
incantations  pronounced  against  the  disease  are  not  with- 
out a  certain  solemn  rhythm  and  tolling  as  of  a  bell,  and 
are  full  of  the  monotony  of  suffering  : — 

"The  fever  of  agony,  the  violent  fever,  the  fever 
which  never  abandons  man,  which  never  abates,  which 
refuses  to  go  away,  the  malignant  fever — 

"  Call  upon  the  spirit  of  the  sky 
And  the  spirit  of  the  earth."  i 

^  La  Magie  chez  les  Chaldeens,  p.  5. 


BABYLON  83 

Herodotus  was  certainly  wrong  in  his  statement  that 
the  Babylonians  had  no  physicians/  since  in  the  Code 
of  Hammurabi  there  is  not  merely  a  fixed  scale  of 
surgeons'  fees  but  mention  of  operations  for  cataract 
with  the  "  lancet."  ^  Yet  there  can  be  no  doubt  that 
during  a  long  period  the  only  refuge  for  diseased  persons 
was  a  sterile  magic. ^  And  it  was  probably  no  mere 
antiquarian  interest  which  caused  an  Assyrian  king  to 
add  to  his  library  a  work  on  therapeutics,  which  had 
already  played  a  great  part  in  the  history  of  the  race, 
and  was,  moreover,  founded  upon  religion.  Aid  was 
still  looked  for  in  a  series  of  formulas  which  were  believed 
to  contain  a  potent  diagnosis.  There  is  one  passage 
dealing  with  the  "  malady  of  the  head  "  which  is  par- 
ticularly striking.  This  disease  appears  to  have  been 
connected  with  some  form  of  suppuration,  and  perhaps 
ended  in  madness.  In  a  remarkable  phrase  it  is  described 
as  being  fastened  like  a  dreadful  tiara  on  the  human 
head  !     The  redundant  formula  is  as  follows : — 

"  The  malady  of  the  head  rages  on  man,  the  malady  of 
the  head  is  fixed  like  a  tiara,  the  malady  of  the  head  that 
rages  from  morning  till  night,  the  malady  of  the  head  shall 
be  cured,  in  the  sea  and  over  the  vast  earth  the  tiara  of 
agony  shall  be  thrust  off,  the  malady  of  the  head  pierces 
like  the  horns  of  a  bull,  the  malady  of  the  head  throbs 
like  a  heart  .  .  .  the  maladies  of  the  head,  may  they  fly 
away  like  birds  into  the  vast  space,  may  the  tortured  one 
be  taken  back  into  the  protecting  arms  of  his  God  !  "  * 

1  Bk.  I.  197.  2  Hammurabi,  215-220. 

^  A  series  of  formulae  relating  to  the  movements  of  serpents,  scorpions, 
dogs,  and  other  animals  have  been  recently  translated  by  Boissier,  Choixde 
Textes,  1905.  Thus  (i.  14)  :  "  Si  un  serpent  est  furieux  contre  un  homme, 
et  siffle  et  que  sa  langue  sort,  cet  homme  deviendra  vieux  et  sera  tue." 

*  La  Magie,  p.  19.  In  another  passage  this  disease  appears  to  be 
specially  connected  with  life  in  the  desert.  "  La  maladie  de  la  tete 
circule  dans  le  desert "  (Z^/Zr^j'  Assyriologiques,vo\.  iii.  p.  137).  The 
"malady  of  the  head"  is  mentioned  in  "  Ishtar's  Descent  into  Hell," 
Cf.  Keilinschriftliche  Bibliothek  (Berlin,  1900),  p.  87. 


84  THE   NEMESIS   OF   NATIONS 

II.  It  is  by  studying  such  documents  as  these,  rather 
than  the  arid  lists  of  dates  and  dynasties,  that  we  gain 
some  insight  into  the  conditions  of  life  in  those  vanished 
ages.  Nineveh  and  Babylon  are  long  in  ashes,  but  if  we 
go  deep  enough  we  find  that  the  ashes  are  still  warm. 
In  spite  of  the  terror  of  their  names,  we  gain,  as  we 
approach  their  ruins,  that  sense  of  human  contact 
which  all  history  awakens.  Among  the  fallen  walls  of 
those  Assyrian  palaces,  which  would  never  have  been 
built  had  there  been  no  Babylon  or  early  Chaldaea,  we 
discover  a  kind  of  sculptured  dirge  and  hear  the  echo 
of  human  cries.  It  is  easy  to  deride  such  fantastic 
notions,  but  he  will  never  read  history  to  any  profit  or 
purpose  who  does  not  recognise  in  these  rude  attempts 
to  understand  Nature  the  genuine  labour  of  the  primi- 
tive mind.  The  attack  of  the  plague  was  believed  to  be 
the  grip  of  an  actual  but  invisible  being  fastening  upon 
man.  In  other  words,  disease  was  supernatural.  Thus 
the  plague  is  described  as  "  that  which  has  neither  hands 
nor  feet,  but  fastens  upon  man  and  binds  him  like  a 
cord."  Elsewhere  it  is  said  to  "embrace  him  like  a 
flame."  In  the  night  of  human  learning  Nature  ap- 
peared to  be  crowded  with  omens  and  alive  with  sorcery. 
Her  outward  demonstrations  were  looked  upon  in  a  kind 
of  expectant  awe.  There  is  a  cry  to  the  sea  to  be  calm, 
to  the  desert  to  be  kind,  and  to  the  volcanic  mountains 
to  be  still.  There  is  even  visible  a  steady  advance  in  the 
humane,  as  the  following  supplication  bears  witness : — 

"He  who  dies  of  hunger  in  prison,  he  who  dies  of 
thirst  in  prison,  he  who,  thrown  into  a  ravine  and 
begging  mercy  for  his  life,  eats  the  dust,  ...  he  who 
is  so  hungry  that  he  is  too  weak  to  stand — 

"  Call  upon  the  spirit  of  the  sky 
And  the  spirit  of  the  earth  !  "  ^ 

1  L,a  Magie,  p.  7. 


BABYLON  85 

This  is  a  fitting  opening  for  the  long  litany  of  man. 
The  entire  work,  graven  in  clay,  naive  and  fantastic, 
stands  like  a  helpless  interjection  before  the  accumu- 
lating troubles  of  existence. 

12.  Religion  was  the  sole  refuge.  Strange  as  it  may 
sound,  it  is  nevertheless  true  that  the  more  we  know 
the  Chaldasan  mind  the  more  we  see  that  it  was  deeply 
religious.  The  old  fundamental  god  was  Ea,  the  Spirit 
of  the  Deep,  who  brooded  over  the  waters  of  the  Persian 
Gulf,  where  the  Tigris  and  the  Euphrates  met.  It  was 
natural  that  where  deep  calls  to  deep  the  Chaldaean 
imagination  felt  the  presence  of  those  dynamic  powers 
of  the  universe  which  in  their  ultimate  meaning  are 
still  inscrutable.  Eridu,  the  old  seaport  where  "  the 
cry  of  the  Chaldasans  was  in  the  ships,"  ^  was  the 
seat  of  worship  of  the  ocean  god  Ea.  It  was  beyond 
the  haze  of  the  horizon  in  the  Indian  Ocean  that 
the  Chaldasans  believed  the  islands  of  the  Blest  to 
be.  The  word  ocean  is  originally  Babylonian,  Uginna^ 
and  means  the  vast  circle.  Now  Ea,  the  Spirit  of  the 
Deep,  was  believed  to  have  a  son,  Mirri-Dugga  or  Murru- 
Dugga,  who  was  the  intercessor  or  redeemer  between 
God  and  man.  Thus,  when  the  *'  malady  of  the  head  " 
was  at  its  height  the  sufferer  was  advised  to  have  recourse 
to  Mirri-Dugga,  who  pleads  with  Ea.  "  The  man  has 
tried  all  remedies,"  says  Mirri-Dugga,  "  but  knows 
none."  Ea  replies,  "Go,  take  a  pitcher  of  water  at 
the  place  where  the  rivers  meet,  and  bless  it,  and  sprinkle 
it  upon  the  man,  and  bind  his  head.  "  ^  This  passage  is 
another  proof  of  the  struggles  of  the  earliest  Baby- 
lonian settlers  with  the  climate  of  the  marsh-lands  which 
had  not  yet  been  drained.  But  it  was  not  in  natural 
but  in  supernatural  causes  that  they  sought  to  find  the 

^  Isa.  xliii.  14. 

^  La  Magie^  p.  21.     Cf.  Hommel,  Geschi elite,  p.  255. 


86  THE   NEMESIS   OF   NATIONS 

origin  of  affliction.  There  is  the  closest  resemblance  be- 
tween the  Chaldagan  and  the  Hebrew  method  of  judging 
human  calamity.  In  the  penitential  psalms,  from  which 
we  have  already  quoted,  the  belief  is  fully  expressed  that 
misfortune  is  the  punishment  of  sin.  Those  psalms  were 
likewise  copied  by  order  of  Assurbanipal,  and  when  we 
read  them  we  seem  to  be  not  in  Assyria  but  in  Israel.^ 
They  were  composed,  however,  neither  in  Nineveh  nor 
in  Babylon,  but  in  certain  dim  old  cities  on  the  Euphrates, 
which  were  the  earliest  seats  of  Chaldasan  civilisation. 

13.  The  forces  which  created  Babylon  were  exceed- 
ingly complex,  but  we  are  able  to  distinguish  two  great 
dynamic  contributors  to  the  main  volume  of  her  power. 
Those  were  (i)  the  Sumerians,  whose  religious  concep- 
tions we  have  been  considering,  and  (2)  the  Semites. 
The  statement  of  Berosus,  that  the  mass  of  human 
beings  who  congregated  round  the  site  of  the  still  un- 
built city  "  lived  without  rule  like  the  beasts  of  the 
field,"  may  be  accepted  as  a  naive  picture  of  that 
racial  chaos  of  which  Babylonia  was  long  the  scene. 
The  most  ancient  inscriptions  are  not  Semitic.  They 
are  Sumerian — i.e.  they  are  the  rough  records  graven 
in  clay  of  a  people  who  were  probably  of  the  same 
race  as  the  Turks.  After  a  close  study  of  the  Sumerian 
fragments,  and  a  comparison  between  them  and  the 
Turkish  dialects,  Hommel  came  to  the  conclusion  that 
the  Sumerians  were  an  offshoot  of  a  Central  Asiatic 
race.^       In    any    case,    neither    the    Sumerians    nor    the 

^  "  I   eat  the   bread  and   drink    the    water   of  wrath.      Witless,  I 
nourish   myself  in   transgressions  "   {Lettrcs  Assyriolo^iques,   tome   iii. 

P-  J  53)-  ... 

*  Hommel  gives  a  number  of  words  which  indicate  a  common  origin 

for  the  Turkish  and  Sumerian  languages.      Such  words  are  God,  son, 

father,  mother,  throat,  &c.  {Geschtckte,  p.  246).     Whether  he  is  correct 

in  the  belief  that "  Sumerian  is  the  oldest  civilised  language  in  the  world  " 

is  a  matter  for  the  judgment  of  philological  experts. 


BABYLON  87 

Semites  were  of  Babylonian   origin,  but  the  Sumerians 
appear    to    have   arrived    earlier.     They    settled    in   the 
south,   near   the  marsh-lands,  which    their   rude  labour 
at  length  converted  into  a  region  fit  for  human  occupa- 
tion.     They   contributed    all  that   was  most  profound 
and  original    in   Babylonian    civilisation,    and    even    the 
Assyrians  inherited    their  achievements.      It  was  early, 
however,   that  representatives   of  a   race   endowed   with 
greater    political   genius    than    the    Sumerians    appeared 
in  Northern  Mesopotamia  and  concentrated  in  Akkad. 
These  were  Semites,  who   had  likewise  come  from   the 
north,  and  they  were  destined  to  be  the  great  cohesive 
force   in  Babylonia.     Akkad,    or   Agadi,  was  originally 
the  name   of  a  city,  but  so  great  was  the  city's  power 
that  the  name  became  co-extensive  with  Upper  Baby- 
lonia, and  served  during  centuries  as  the  official  desig- 
nation of  the  entire  district.     Accadians  and  Sumerians 
were  thus  the  first  two  great  rival  races  between  whom 
we  are  able  to  record  with  authentic  detail  a  prolonged 
duel  for  the  possession  of  the  valley  of  the  Euphrates. 
Their  history  begins  with  a  series  of  inscriptions  which 
are  frequently  contemporary  with  the  events  which  they 
relate.     These  inscriptions  prove  the  existence,  at  a  very 
early  date,  of  a  number  of  cities  ruled  over  by  independent 
kings.     Just  as  the  Italy  of  Machiavelli's  age  was  split 
into  separate  towns  perpetually  at  war,  so  early  Babylonia 
was  the  scene  of  numerous  local  sovereignties  always  in 
danger  of  collision.     For  the  foundation  of  such  cities  as 
Eridu,  the  southern  seaport,  and  Nippur,  the  great  city  in 
the  north,  we  are  carried  back  to  a  date  not  later  than  6500 
B.C.     That  the  antiquity  of  Chaldaean  sites  is  immense 
is  proved  by  the  fact  that  Ur,  one  of  the  oldest  towns, 
was  a   colony  of  Nippur,  which,   therefore,   must  have 
existed  far  earlier.     For  our  present  purpose,  however 
we  have  no  need  to  discuss  the  problem  of  dates  which 


88  THE   NEMESIS   OF   NATIONS 

long  ago  were  blurred  or  effaced/  A  survey  of  the 
country's  ruins  yields  a  far  more  impressive  picture 
of  the  lapse  of  time.  Thus  at  Nippur,  Hilprecht  has 
been  able  to  measure  roughly  the  depth  of  years  by 
the  depth  of  debris  gathered  about  the  site  of  the 
Temple  of  Bel,  which,  long  before  the  date  of  Babylon, 
had  been  a  great  religious  centre.  The  oldest  or  pre- 
historic ages  until  4000  B.C.  are  represented  by  six 
different  strata  of  ruin.  The  long  period  of  Babylonian 
greatness  (4000  B.C. -300  B.C.)  is  measured  by  nine 
different  strata,  while  six  represent  the  last  phase, 
which  was  prolonged  from  300  B.C.  until  1000  years 
after  Christ.  This  quantity  of  dust  represents  an  im- 
mense portion  out  of  the  life  of  humanity.  The  mere 
inscriptions  and  tablets  discovered  by  the  American  ex- 
pedition at  Nippur  cover  a  space  of  3350  years.^  But 
the  most  ancient  Sumerian  cities  were  founded  in  an 
age  in  which  writing  had  not  been  invented,  and  their 
debris  represents  an  antiquity  too  remote  to  be  dated. 
The  investigator  is  like  a  traveller  along  a  road  on  which, 
indeed,  he  finds  milestones,  but  the  distances  recorded  on 
the  milestones  have  been  obliterated  by  the  weather,  and 
at  last  even  the  milestones  cease. 

14.  Nevertheless,  although  it  is  impossible  to  dis- 
cover an  exact  chronology  for  the  earliest  periods,  their 
ruins  frequently  furnish  us  with  a  vivid  picture  of  the 
conditions  of  human  life.  For  instance,  at  Telloh, 
Sarzec   and    Heuzey   discovered   not   only   a   monument 

^  Whoever  wishes  to  plunge  into  the  tormenting  study  of  Babylonian 
chronology  may  consult  Menart's  "The  Real  Chronology  and  the  True 
History  of  the  Babylonian  ]3ynasties  "  (London,  Albert  Square,  1888)  ; 
vol.  ii.  (No.  5)  of  the  "  Babylonian  and  Oriental  Record  ;"  and  "  Early 
Babylonian  History,"  by  Hugo  Radau  (New  York,  1900).  See  also 
Keilinschriftliche  Bibliothek  (Berlin,  1890),  pp.  272-291. 

^  "The  Babylonian  Expedition  of  the  University  of  Pennsylvania," 
vol.  i.  p.  1 1. 


BABYLON  89 

containing    the    oldest    battle   picture   in   the  world,   in 
which   we   see   the   vultures   carrying    off  the   heads   of 
the  decapitated  slain/  but  they  stumbled  upon  the  ruins 
of  a   royal  villa,   whose   construction   is  of   more   than 
architectural  interest.     They  were  surprised  to  find  that 
although  the  walls  are  still  high  there  is  no  trace  of  any 
form   of   entrance   to   the   building.^     T'/iere    had   never 
been  a  door.     In  order  to  effect  an  entrance  it  was  first 
necessary  to  scale  the  walls,  and  then  descend  through 
the  roof.      There  could  be  no  more  vivid  picture  of  the 
social  chaos  of  the  world  six  thousand  years  ago.     There 
is  one  other  fact  worth  mentioning.     It  was  the  custom 
of  Chaldasan  builders  and  overseers  to  sign  their  name 
or  the  name  of  the  king  on  each  brick  as  a  guarantee 
that  it  was  fit  to  be  used  and  had  been  "  passed."     Such 
signatures   were  equivalent   to   a   trade-mark   or   official 
stamp.     But  on  the  bricks  of  King  Ur-Nina's  villa  the 
only  signature  is  the  mark  of  the  overseer's  finger-nail, 
which  had  been  impressed  while  the  clay  was  still  soft. 
Since  we  find  the  mark  of  finger-nails  in  place  of  signa- 
tures even  in  contracts  as  late  as  the  reign  of  Sennacherib,^ 
we  are  prohibited  from  saying  that  in  the  time  of  King 
Ur-Nina  (4000  B.C.)  the  art  of  writing  was  not  widely 
diffused.     As  a  matter  of  fact  the  Sumerian  monuments 
of  that   age  are   covered   by   inscriptions.'*     But  we   do 
possess    specimens    of   Chaldaean    art    in    the    shape    of 

^  Decouvertes  en  Chalde'e,  Part  II.  (Paris,  1887).  Telloh  is  the 
Arabic  name  for  a  mound,  and  is  specially  applied  to  the  mound  situated 
on  the  left  bank  of  the  grand  canal  Schatt-el-Hai  which  connected  the 
Tigris  and  the  Euphrates. 

*  Une  Villa  Royale  Chalde'enne,  p.  8.  There  are  reasons  for  believing 
that  the  building  in  question  was  sometimes  used  as  a  treasure-house  or 
a  granary. 

^  Documents  Juridiqties  de  V Assyria  et  de  la  Chald^e,  par  Oppert  et 
Menant,  p.  171. 

*  E.g.  the  bas-reliefs  and  inscriptions  of  Ur-Ghanna,King  of  Sirgulla, 
4500  B.C. 


90  THE   NEMESIS   OF   NATIONS 

cylinder  seals  which  appear  to  belong  to  an  age  in  which 
writing  in  the  strict  sense  did  not  exist.  These  objects 
contain  only  fantastic  ornaments,  and  the  rudest  pictures 
of  plants  and  animals,  as  indications  of  an  attempt  of 
the  human  mind  to  become  articulate. 

15.  A  prolonged  conflict  took  place  between  the  rival 
cities  of  old  Chaldasa,  and  in  groping  among  the  frag- 
ments of  their  history  we  appear  to  be  in  the  presence 
of  a  struggle  not  unlike  that  which  took  place  between 
the  republics  of  Italy  in  the  Middle  Ages.  It  is  evident 
that  each  city  hoped  to  be  the  nucleus  of  a  prospective 
state,  and  that  each  in  turn  attempted  to  seize  the  hege- 
mony of  the  whole  district.  For  instance,  Larsa  (the 
Ellasar  of  Genesis  xiv.  i)  became  predominant  in 
Southern  Babylonia  in  the  third  millennium  before  Christ. 
This  is  proved  by  the  fact  that  the  old  Sumerian 
name  of  Larsa  before  its  capture  by  Hammurabi,  viz. 
Singirra  or  Shinar,  was  the  name  by  which  the  entire 
lower  valley  of  the  Euphrates  was  known  to  the 
Hebrews  (Genesis  x.  10).^  Even,  however,  during 
what  we  may  call  the  invertebrate  period  of  Babylonian 
history,  when  there  was  no  permanent  central  authority, 
there  appears  to  be  evidence  that  Babylon  was  already 
in  existence,  not  indeed  as  a  political  but  as  a  religious 
centre.  In  an  inscription  of  [Uru]-Ka-gin-na,  King  of 
SirguUa,  there  is  mention  of  Tintira,  the  Seat  of  Life — 
that  is,  Babylon  in  its  earliest  name.  The  date  assigned 
to  this  inscription  is  4200  b.c.  Now,  in  ancient  Babylonia 
political  authority  was  dependent  upon  religious  functions 
and  traditions,  and  was  invariably  their  later  develop- 
ment.    It  looks,  therefore,  as  if  it  had  been  the  policy 

^  According  to  Hommel  {Geschickte,  p.  220),  the  modern  Senkereh  is 
the  Arabic  equivalent  of  Shingir  or  Singirra,  i.e.  Shinar,  just  as  Niffer 
represents  Nippur.  In  other  words,  Singirra-Larsa,  like  Akkad,  gave  its 
name  to  an  entire  district. 


BABYLON  9 1 

of  an  ambitious  power  to  erect  a  temple  as  a  kind  of 
outpost   in   a   desirable   district — an  outpost,   moreover, 
which,  owing  to  its  nature,  would  be  inviolate.     There 
the  authority  of  the  god  might  accumulate  until  such 
time   as  military   occupation  in  his   name   became   con- 
venient.    This   method   of  sanctified   aggression   is  not 
without    examples    in    modern    Christian    States,   whose 
religious    missionaries    have    frequently    been    the    fore- 
runners    of     military     conquest.       What     appears     to 
strengthen    this    view,  so    far    as    the    ancient  world    is 
concerned,  is  that  the  foundation  of  cities  like  Assur  and 
Nineveh  happened   in    the    same   way.       Although   the 
histories  of  Assyria  and  of  Babylon,  in  so  far  as  their 
rivalry  is  considered,  begin  to  synchronise  only  in  the 
second     millennium,    Nineveh,   as    a    religious    outpost, 
had   been   created   as  early  as  3000  b.c.     The  original 
Sumerian  name  of  Nineveh  was  Ghanna-Ki,  i.e.  City  of 
Ghanna,  the  ancient  goddess  of  the  Sumerians.^     Indeed, 
most   of  the   difficulty,  and  part  of  the  fascination,  of 
Babylonian    history    lies    in    the    intricate   ramifications 
and   the   sporadic   development   over   a   wide   area   of  a 
single   civilisation.     Simultaneous   enterprises  appear  to 
have  been  undertaken  at  a  very  early  time,  and  produced 
much  later  the   most   stupendous  results.     We   behold 
an  empire  like  Assyria  rising  out  of  a  single  early  shrine. 
We    discover  flourishing  kingdoms,   but  we   trace  with 
difficulty  the  date  of  the  planting  of  their  roots  and  the 
stages  of  their  growth. 

16.  Not  Nineveh,  however,  but  Babylon  was  to  be 
the  first  great  goal  of  all  the  minor  municipal  experi- 
ments of  Western  Asia.  The  primitive  seats  of  local 
power  such  as  Nippur,  Ur,  Larsa,  and  Nisin,  great  and 
important  as  they  were  in  their  day,  were,  after  all,  only 

^  On  the  relation  between  Ghanna  and  Nind,  whence  Nineveh,  see 
Hommel,  Geschichte,  p.  280. 


92  THE   NEMESIS   OF   NATIONS 

microcosms  which  prepared  the  way  for  the  macrocosm 
which  was  Babylon.  Interesting  as  the  history  of  their 
rivalries  and  of  the  extent  of  their  conquests  would  be 
if  it  were  thoroughly  known  to  us,  it  could  contain 
nothing  so  audacious  or  colossal  as  the  history  of  the 
city  which  made  them  all  her  vassals.  Compared  with 
her  archives  theirs  would  be  only  suburban.  They  never 
accumulated  such  a  massive  authority,  and  the  world 
was  not  filled  with  the  names  of  any  of  them.  Rather, 
it  was  by  the  grace  of  Babylon  that  they  continued  to 
exist  at  all,  and  to  become  her  parishes.  Most  of  them 
were  her  parasites,  and  were  content  to  live  upon  what 
she  allotted  to  them.  She  subdued  all  their  chaotic 
elements  into  a  harmony.  The  centre  of  gravity  of 
that  portion  of  Western  Asia  had  been  kept  oscillating 
between  each  of  them  during  centuries,  but  at  last  it 
became  steady  at  Babylon. 

17.  Political  and  social  centralisation  has  invariably 
been  the  result  of  a  general  collision  of  contradictory 
elements.  When  a  crowd  of  forces  are  struggling  within 
a  given  area,  concentration  takes  place  sooner  or  later 
round  a  point  at  which  the  advantages  are  greatest,  and 
that  point  becomes  the  dominating  centre.  It  was  so  in 
Greece  and  in  Rome,  in  modern  Germany,  in  modern 
Italy,  and  indeed  in  the  evolution  of  all  empires.  But 
all  such  fusions  are  only  late  instances  of  a  law  of 
political  construction  which  had  already  worked  out 
great  results  at  Babylon.  What  Latium  did  for  Italy, 
Babylon  did  for  Asia.  The  strong  man,  Sargon  of 
Akkad,  a  city  which  had  become  a  district,  at  last 
appeared,  and  having  seized  upon  the  more  advantageous 
site  of  Babylon,  which  had  hitherto  been  occupied  only 
by  the  temple  of  a  god,  he  converted  it  into  a  great 
political  and  military  centre.  His  date  is  about  3800  B.C. 
The  unmistakable  proof  of  his  power  consists  in  the  fact 


BABYLON  93 

that  after  his  advent  the  kings  of  the  neighbouring  cities 
became  only  vice-kings  and  vassals.  But  the  most  sur- 
prising feature  of  his  reign  is  the  sudden  and  almost 
indefinite  extension  of  the  Babylonian  Empire  west- 
wards. Inscriptions  prove  that  Sargon  undertook  "  a 
three  years'  campaign  "  in  the  West,  and  even  the  Medi- 
terranean is  mentioned.  The  actual  city  of  Babylon  had 
not  yet  become  omnipotent,  but  it  was  already  the 
nucleus  of  an  empire.  And  it  was  then  for  the  first 
time  that  the  dwellers  on  the  shores  of  the  Mediter- 
ranean heard  the  name  of  a  great  Power  which  had 
arisen  in  the  Orient.  Until  the  third  century  before 
Christ  that  name  was  to  be  the  greatest  in  the  world. 
The  subsequent  history  of  Babylon  makes  it  clear  that 
Sargon's  ambitious  Western  policy  had  become  a  tradi- 
tion. Even  a  late  reigning  king  of  Assyria  called  himself 
Sargon  II.  in  the  hope  of  imitating  the  conquests  of  his 
namesake.  The  West,  indeed,  possessed  the  greatest 
fascination  for  the  Babylonians,  who  were  not  content 
until  Egypt,  Phoenicia,  and  Cyprus  had  acknowledged 
their  power.  There  have  been  in  the  history  of  the 
world  regular  periods  of  what  we  might  call  geographical 
excitement,  when  men  felt  compelled  by  something  more 
than  the  mere  lust  of  conquest  to  explore  the  unex- 
plored. It  is  one  of  the  ideal  facts  in  the  life  of  man 
that  he  is  aware  of  the  horizon,  and  that  it  is  always 
beckoning  to  him.  Even  in  the  inscriptions  of  a  fero- 
cious conqueror  like  Tiglath-pileser  I.  {circa  1120  B.C.) 
there  are  traces  of  the  excitement  of  travel.  He  calls 
himself  with  pride  the  "  Conqueror  of  the  Mediter- 
ranean," and  he  exhibits  among  his  trophies  the  strange 
beasts,  birds,  and  plants  which  he  had  discovered  on 
the  shores  of  that  "  great  sea."  It  is  characteristic  of 
the  history  of  Babylonia  that  everything  is  in  motion. 
From    the    time    of   Sargon    downwards    military    ex- 


94  THE   NEMESIS   OF   NATIONS 

peditions  are  Incessant  In  all  directions.  There  is  no 
stagnation  or  immobility  as  in  Egypt.  Even  when 
alien  dynasties  seized  the  throne  they  became  more 
Babylonian  than  the  Babylonians.  And  when  at  length 
the  Assyrians  inherited  the  energy  of  the  mother- 
state,  they  could  only  imitate  but  not  surpass  her 
colossal  undertakings. 

1 8.  We  cannot  afford,  however,  to  watch  the  pro- 
longed and  somewhat  monotonous  ebb  and  flow  of  power 
which  changed  so  often  the  face  of  the  Chaldasan  Plain. 
We  are  more  interested  in  Babylon  herself  than  in  her 
military  fortunes,  because  we  are  attempting  to  discover 
her  relation  to  humanity.  It  is  certainly  no  matter  of 
surprise  that  so  much  genius  has  been  expended  in  ex- 
cavating her  ruins  and  those  of  her  vassal  cities.  As  men 
are  able  to  judge  the  stature  of  an  organism  by  the  size  of 
a  single  bone,  so  when  we  examine  her  fragments  we  are 
able  to  see  how  great  an  area  her  buildings  covered 
and  to  guess  from  what  height  they  fell.  Her  place  in 
the  annals  of  mankind  is  so  great  and  so  inscrutable  that 
it  is  no  wonder  that  men  peer  about  her  debris  and  vex 
her  ghost  in  the  hope  of  discovering  some  traces  of  her 
grandeur.  But  the  Babylon  whose  ashes  lie  to-day  on 
both  sides  of  the  Euphrates,  which  once  flowed  past  her 
well-built  quays,^  was  the  city  of  Nebuchadnezzar,  son 
of  Nabopolassar  (604  B.C.-562  B.C.),  that  is  to  say,  the 
city  at  the  height  of  her  splendour  but  not  at  the 
height  of  her  political  greatness.  Ages  had  passed  since 
Sargon  I.  had  made  her  a  world  power,  and  some  of  that 
power  had  departed.  Nevertheless,  Nebuchadnezzar  did 
much  by  his  conquests  or  reconquests  to  restore  her 
prestige.  Her  trade  was  still  enormous,  and  her  wealth 
appeared  to  be  inexhaustible.      Nebuchadnezzar,  whom 

1  "Euphrates   interfluit,   magnaeque   molis   crepidinibus   coercetur" 
(Quintus  Curtius,  Hist.  Alex.  Magn.,  v.  i). 


BABYLON  95 

Maspero  has  happily  called  le  roi  ma^on^  because  of 
that  king's  passion  for  architecture  and  building  of  all 
sorts,  created  for  the  first  time  her  outward  glory. 
After  all,  it  was  his  Babylon  which  was  the  wonder  of 
the  world,  and  excited  the  admiration  of  writers  like 
Herodotus.  If  the  present  ruins  are  neither  so  extensive 
nor  so  full  of  treasure  as  might  have  been  expected  from 
the  account  Herodotus  gives  of  so  luxurious  a  city,  the 
causes  are  not  difficult  to  discover.  To  begin  with,  the 
explanation  which  Botta  proposes  of  the  peculiar  form 
of  the  mounds  which  cover  Nineveh  is  doubtless  appli- 
cable in  large  measure  to  the  mounds  at  Babylon.  In 
both  cases  it  is  not  a  mere  question  of  buildings  placed  in 
a  sandy  soil  and  gradually  sinking  under  an  accumulation 
of  sand.  Although  so  near  the  desert,  the  soil  of  Baby- 
lonia is  not  sandy.  But  the  nature  of  the  buildings 
furnishes  an  explanation  of  the  form  of  their  ruins. 
The  walls  were  of  an  immense  thickness,  and  after  a 
long  process  of  crumbling  the  detritus  of  the  brick 
differs  so  little  from  ordinary  soil  that  the  growth  of 
vegetation  upon  it  is  only  a  matter  of  time.  In  the 
second  place,  one  of  the  chief  causes  of  obliteration  at 
Babylon  was  the  overflow  of  the  neglected  canals,  which 
not  merely  joined  the  two  rivers  at  a  hundred  points, 
but  irrigated  the  country  in  all  directions.  It  can  be 
easily  imagined  how,  after  the  dykes  had  given  way,  the 
water  began  to  percolate  and  gradually  sap  the  founda- 
tions of  buildings  of  soft  brick.  Stone  was  indeed  used 
in  Babylonia,  but  only  rarely,  since  it  had  to  be  imported 
at  great  expense,  and  the  only  native  material  for  build- 
ing was  brick,  sun-dried  or  baked.  Given  these  materials, 
it  is  indeed  a  surprise  that  there  should  exist  extensive 
ruins,  or  any  ruins  at  all,  after  such  a  lapse  of  ages.  But, 
lastly,  before  any  natural  causes  had  begun  to  operate, 

^  Page  641, 


96  THE   NEMESIS   OF   NATIONS 

Babylon  had  been  frequently  pillaged  and  her  great 
public  buildings  had  been  destroyed.  She  became  the 
plunder  of  successive  conquerors.  Four  great  capitals 
are  said  to  have  been  built  out  of  her  ruins,  and  two  of 
these  were  Seleucia  and  Ctesiphon.  Moreover,  during 
a  long  period  she  remained  the  quarry  for  surrounding 
villages  and  towns.  Yet  even  as  they  lie  to-day  the 
ruins  cover  an  immense  area.  Layard  saw  "  for  a  dis- 
tance of  three  miles  an  uninterrupted  line  of  mounds, 
the  ruins  of  vast  edifices,  collected  together  as  in  the 
heart  of  a  great  city."  ^  Although  the  debris  is  con- 
tained within  a  space  three  miles  long  and  a  mile  and  a 
quarter  broad,  no  one  supposes  that  that  area  defines  the 
boundaries  of  the  city.  On  the  contrary,  there  exist  on 
every  side,  and  especially  towards  the  north  and  east, 
remains  of  great  buildings.  Irregular  masses  extend  for 
miles,  and  modern  travellers  are  more  and  more  con- 
vinced that  the  ancient  reports  as  to  the  city's  magnitude 
should  not  be  summarily  rejected. 

19.  According  to  Herodotus,  who  appears  to  have 
actually  visited  Babylon,  the  city  was  built  in  the  form 
of  a  square  whose  sides  were  120  stades,  or  about 
14  miles,  each  way.  In  other  words,  the  entire  length 
of  the  walls  was  56  miles,"  and  the  inner  area  contained 
about  two  hundred.  This  calculation  is  believed  to  be 
excessive.  But  there  is  a  statement  of  Xenophon  which 
brings  before  us  the  magnitude  of  the  city  in  a  more 
vivid  manner  than  any  surveyor's  estimate  could  ever 
attain.  He  says  that  it  was  not  until  sunrise  that  the 
garrison  and  the  inhabitants  of  the  city  were  aware  of 
its  fall.  Now,  fighting  had  continued  throughout  the 
night,  and  Xenophon's  words  imply  that  many  hours 
had    passed    before    the   news    had    spread   through  the 

^  "  Nineveh  and  Babylon,"  p.  491. 
^  Herodotus,  i.  178. 


BABYLON  97 

streets  and  to  the  most  distant  parts  of  the  city.^  Such 
a  fact  proves .  the  truth  of  the  statement  that  Babylon 
was  not  merely  a  city  but  an  enclosed  district.  It  con- 
tained not  merely  streets,  squares,  and  docks,  but  great 
open  spaces  in  which  wheat  was  grown  with  a  view  to 
victualling  the  place  during  a  siege.  It  was  a  vast 
garden  city.  Between  the  streets  lay  meadows,  orchards, 
and  pleasure-grounds  which  were  the  wonder  of  the 
world.  The  hanging  gardens  were  raised  so  high  that, 
according  to  Quintus  Curtius,  they  looked  from  a  dis- 
tance like  a  forest  on  the  top  of  a  mountain.^  The 
entire  mass  was  supported  by  twenty  walls,  22  feet  thick 
and  1 1  feet  apart.  The  gardens  were  built  in  terraces 
one  above  the  other,  and  had  the  aspect  of  an  amphi- 
theatre. Each  terrace  was  supported  by  a  vaulted  gallery.^ 
On  the  highest  terrace,  according  to  Strabo,  there  were 
"  water  engines,"  or  pumps,  by  means  of  which  water 
was  raised  from  the  Euphrates  ;  "  for  the  river,  which 
is  a  stadium  in  breadth,  flows  through  the  middle  of 
the  city,  and  the  garden  is  on  one  of  its  banks."*  If, 
however,  so  much  space  was  allotted  to  the  gardens 
and  public  buildings  of  Babylon,  the  residential  portion 
must  have  covered  an  immense  area.  For  instance,  the 
enclosure  in  which  the  Temple  of  Bel  stood  was  quarter 
of  a  mile  in  length  and  in  breadth.  The  platform  at 
the  temple's  base  measured  200  yards  each  way.  Strabo 
says  that  the  building  itself  was  a  quadrangular  pyramid 
of  baked  brick  reaching  to  a  height  of  606  feet  9  inches.^ 

^  Cyrus  attacked  Babylon  at  midnight.  The  month  was  October. 
The  passage  from  Xenophon  is  in  the  "  History  of  Cyrus,"  Bk.  VII. 
ch.  V. 

^  "  Ut  procul  visentibus  sylvae  montibus  suis  imminere  videantur  " 
{pp.  cit.,  V.  I ). 

3  Diod.  Sic,  Bk.  V.  10.  ♦  Bk.  XVI.  ch.  i.  5. 

^  XVI.  i.  5.  Strabo's  "one  stade"  is  believed,  however,  to  repre- 
sent the  length  of  the  circular  ascent.  In  that  case  the  actual  height 
would  not  be  more  than  500  feet. 

G 


98  THE   NEMESIS   OF   NATIONS 

This  extraordinary  structure  must  have  dominated  the 
Babylonian    Plain    much    as   the    Cathedral   of  Chartres 
dominates    La    Beauce.     After    its    destruction    by    the 
Persians  Alexander   the  Great  attempted   to  rebuild   it, 
and   employed  during  two  months  10,000  men  for  the 
sole   purpose  of  clearing  away  the  debris.     Even  in  the 
ruins  of  Babylon  we  discover  traces  of  her  megalomania. 
Everything    she   did   was   on    an   immense  scale.      The 
thickness  of  her  walls  excited  the  astonishment  of  early 
writers,  who  say  that   there  was  on   the   top  of  them  a 
roadway    so   wide    that    four-horsed    chariots    could    be 
driven   past  each    other   with    no    difficulty    or    danger. 
When  Alexander    saw   them,   their    height,   although   it 
had  been   reduced   by  Cyrus,  Darius,  and   Xerxes,   was 
in  some  places  not  less  than  75  feet.     Facts  like  these 
help   us   to   understand  why  Alexander,  as  Strabo  says, 
preferred   Babylon    because  it  far  surpassed   other  cities 
in  magnitude.     In   the  age  of  her  splendour  she  looked 
like  a   vast  glimmering  caravansary  of  the  human  race. 
Each    of  her   walls   was    pierced   by  twenty-five    brazen 
gates,  so  that  in  all  there  were  a  hundred,  which  opened 
into  streets  which   led  direct  to  the  quays.     It  was  in 
accordance  with  the  Babylonian  love  of  science  that  the 
city  was  built  with  mathematical  exactness.     If  we  look 
at  Oppert's  map  we  shall  see  that  the  Euphrates  formed 
the  diagonal  of  the  vast  square.     A  bridge   1000  yards 
long  and  30  feet   broad    spanned   the   river,   and  there 
was  a  tunnel  underneath  ;  and  we  now  know   from  the 
recently  discovered  code  of  law  that  there  was  a  constant 
traffic  in  boats. 

20.  The  concentration  of  a  vast  multitude  within  the 
limits  of  a  single  city  has  invariably  presented  the  same 
moral  problem.  There  takes  place  a  certain  feverish 
heightening  of  human  temperature.  There  is  the  ex- 
citement   of    contact.      The    streets    arc    full    of    faces 


BABYLON  99 

perpetually  scrutinising  each  other  in  the  hope  of  dis- 
covering signs  of  sympathy.  Commerce  brings  wealth, 
which  in  its  turn  brings  luxury  and  vice  and  ruin. 
Babylon  became  the  byword  of  the  world.  There  is  a 
most  remarkable  statement  by  Quintus  Curtius  regard- 
ing her  manners ;  and  if,  as  there  is  no  reason  to  doubt, 
that  statement  is  true,  it  lets  us  see  how  insidious  was 
her  power.  In  his  Life  of  Alexander  the  Great  he 
tells  us  that  the  world's  conqueror  was  so  strangely 
fascinated  by  Babylon,  even  in  her  deshabille^  that  he  could 
not  tear  himself  away.^  But  he  remained  too  long. 
No  place,  says  Quintus  Curtius,  was  ever  so  ruinous  to 
military  discipline,  no  city  ever  so  learned  in  all  the 
modes  of  vice.  In  thirty-four  days  the  victorious  army 
of  Asia  was  so  corrupted  that  had  it  been  called  upon 
to  face  an  enemy  it  would  have  been  routed.^  So  great 
was  the  peril  that  reinforcements  were  hurried  up  at  the 
last  moment.  This  statement  of  a  sober  writer  appears 
to  justify  the  splendid  invective  which  the  great  visionary 
idealists  of  Israel  uttered  against  Babylon.  She  hypno- 
tised even  her  invaders.  She  threw  upon  them  the 
anaesthetics  and  stupor  of  her  luxury.  Men  seem  to 
have  felt  a  peculiar  excitement  whenever  they  came 
within  sound  of  the  traffic  of  her  streets.  In  her  heart 
she  was  cosmopolitan,  and  loved  to  see  foreigners,  and 
especially  merchants,  within  her  walls.  She  even  invented 
strange  luxuries  and  ruses  to  allure  them.^  She  made 
them  thoroughly  at  home,  and  supplied  them  with  postal 
arrangements  which  are  said  to  have  been  perfect.     Her 

^  "  Diutius  in  hac  urbe  quam  usquam  constitit  rex"  (v.  i).  Alexander 
died  at  Babylon,  and  there  is  evidence  that  his  own  excesses  either 
caused  or  hurried  his  death. 

^  "  Inter  haec  flagitia  exercitus  ille  domitor  Asise,  per  xxxiv  dies 
saginatus,  ad  ea,  qufe  sequebantur,  discrimina  haud  dubie  debilior  futurus 
fuit  si  hostem  habuisset "  (V.  i.  39). 

'  Herodotus,  i.  199. 


100  THE   NEMESIS   OF   NATIONS 

couriers    and    caravans    went    throughout    the    civilised 
world.     She  was  the  Bank  and  Exchange  of  the  East. 
She   sent   her   stuffs   to   Egypt   and    Phoenicia,  and   the 
Phoenicians,  who  were  the  great  carriers  and  middlemen 
of   the    ancient    world,  distributed    them   through  Asia 
Minor  and  along  the  shores  of  the  Mediterranean.      Her 
rugs,  linen,  pottery,  and  glass  took  the  highest  prices  in 
the  world's  markets.     A  great  trade-route  led  from  her 
gates  to  the  Caspian  Sea  and  thence  to  India. ^     It  was 
from  India  that  she  was  supplied  with  some  of  the  dyes 
for  her  fabrics,  with  shawls  (a  Sanskrit  word),  hunting 
dogs,  and  precious  stones  for  seals,  lapis-lazuli,  emeralds, 
and   jaspers.     She   was    placed    near   Arabia   and    Syria, 
where  the  finest  cotton  grew.      Her  sea-borne  commerce 
met  her  caravans  at  the  mouth  of  the  Euphrates.     She 
was   the   market   of  Asia.     Like   modern   England    she 
depended  upon  the  foreigner  for  her  raw  material,  and 
she  passed  cotton,  wool,  and  silk  into  her  looms.     Her 
carpets  and  her  robes,  her  perfumes,  and  chiselled  walk- 
ing-sticks were  all   the  fashion.     Athenaeus  mentions  her 
perfumed   wine.      Her   banquets   were   the   talk    of   the 
world,  which  aped  her  manners.     Herodotus  presents  us 
with  a  vivid  picture  of  a  well-dressed  Babylonian  gentle- 
man, sumptuous  in  tunics  and  leather  shoes,  and  carrying 
"  a  walking-stick  carved  at  the  top  into  the  form  of  an 
apple,  a  rose,  a  lily,  an  eagle,  or  some  such  ornament." 
The  city  spent  vast  sums  on  religious  processions,  and 
it  was   part   of  her   policy  to  impress  strangers  by  her 
grandeur.     But  even  in  the  midst  of  her  vain  show  we 
discover  traces  of  that  humanity  which  lay  obscure  within 
her.    Thus  the  sick  were  laid  in  the  streets  in  order  that 
the   passers-by,  if  they   chanced   to   have   once   suffered 

1  For  a  description  of  this  road,  and  of  the  pass  through  which  it  led, 
cf.  Pliny,  "Natural  History,"  vi.  17.  One  portion  of  it  was  cut  through 
the  mountains  ;  "toto  opere  manu  facto,"  says  Pliny. 


BABYLON  1 01 

from  the  same  disease,  might  be  able  to  give  advice, 
'*  recommending  whatever  they  found  good  in  their  own 
case  or  in  a  case  known  to  them."  ^  There  was  the  naive 
provision  that  no  one  was  allowed  to  go  past  without 
having  at  least  inquired  from  what  ailment  the  patient 
suffered.  She  was  the  city  of  ideas.  She  was  the  ville 
lumiere.  She  endured  sack  after  sack,  but  even  in  her 
state  of  ruin  she  astonished  Alexander.  And  she  might 
have  continued  to  shake  herself  free  from  her  enemies 
had  not  a  weak  prince,  spending  in  debauch  a  night 
which  should  have  been  spent  in  victory,  brought  the 
invader  within  the  gates.  She  lay  within  sight  of  the 
desert,  and  mocked  it  by  her  abundance.  Even  her 
revilers  appear  to  have  been  fascinated,  talk  of  her 
beauty,^  call  her  "  the  golden  city,"  and  allow  us  to 
see  almost  every  plume  and  ribbon  of  her  pomp.  Over 
what  she  once  was  there  now  grow  a  few  tamarisks. 

21.  But  Babylon  has  left  not  only  material  ruins. 
She  has  left  what  we  may  call  spiritual  ruins  in  the  form 
of  religion  and  of  law.  We  have  already  looked  at  the 
dark  background  of  her  idolatry  and  her  faith,  but  her 
contributions  to  the  religions  of  the  world  cannot  be 
investigated  here.  It  is  in  her  system  of  justice,  and  in 
her  dealings  with  her  own  people  and  with  her  enemies, 
whom  she  compelled  to  serve  her,  that  we  are  at  present 
interested.  The  entire  superstructure  of  her  vast  social 
system  rested  upon  a  foundation  of  involuntary  labour. 
And  we  have  now  to  ask  how  she  treated  the  mass  of 
human  beings  whose  toil  made  her  great.  What  share 
of  her  wealth  and  of  her  well-being  fell  to  the  slaves, 
without  whom  her  industrial  organisation  and  her  place 
in  the  world  could  never  have  been  maintained  } 

^  Herodotus,  i.  197.     This  custom  was  introduced  at  Rome. 
2  "Babylon,  the  glory  of  kingdoms,  the   beauty  of  the   Chaldees' 
excellency"  (Isa.  xiii.  19). 


I02  THE   NEMESIS   OF   NATIONS 

22,  The  slaves  were  the  working  classes  in  Babylonia, 
and  we  possess  three   sources   of  information  regarding 
their  treatment.     These  sources  are:   (i)  certain  mural 
decorations  in  which  the  Assyrian  kings  celebrated  typical 
scenes   of  the  capture  and  enslavement  of  prisoners  of 
war;   (2)  a  large  number  of  clay  tablets  containing  con- 
tracts for  the  sale  and  the  purchase  of  slaves;  and  (3) 
the  great  system  of  law  known  as  the  Code  of  Ham- 
murabi.    There    can    be    no    doubt    that    the    Assyrian 
sculptures  depict  what  took  place  on  all  the  battlefields 
of  Western  Asia.     Both  Nineveh  and  Babylon  undertook 
wars  for  the  express  purpose  of  procuring  slaves.     It  is 
true   that   the  Assyrians   are   usually  supposed   to   have 
been    more   ruthless  in   their  conquests    than   the    Baby- 
lonians.    But    it    is   doubtful   whether   this   supposition 
is  correct.     Assyria   inherited   all   the   traditions  of  the 
mother-state.     The  fact   that  the  religion  and    the  law 
of  Babylon  prevailed  at  Nineveh  is  proof  that  the  civilisa- 
tion of  the  two  states  was  the  same.     Their  methods  of 
capture  and  of  enslavement  cannot  have  been  different. 
It  is  even  probable  that  in  the  great  days  of  her  aggres- 
sion   Babylon   was    more   savage   than    her   daughter    in 
exacting  the  conditions  of  peace.     There  is  a  passage  in 
Habakkuk   which    indicates    the    terror    that    her    army 
inspired.      "They  are   terrible   and    dreadful,"  says   the 
Hebrew  prophet.     "Their  horses  also  are  swifter  than 
the  leopards  and  are  more  fierce  than  the  evening  wolves, 
and    their  horsemen  shall  spread    themselves,  and    their 
horsemen  shall  come  from  far.     They  shall  come  all  for 
violence  .  .   .   and  they  shall  gather   slaves   as  the  sandy 
Now,  the  spirit  of  this  description  is  exactly  reproduced 
in  those  Assyrian  sculptures  in  which  we  see  long  lines 
of  slaves  being  dragged  by  chains  fastened  sometimes  to 
their  lips,  or  being  forced  under  the  lash  of  the  overseer 
to  move  immense  blocks  for  the  construction  of  temples 


BABYLON 


103 


and  palaces.^  Men  like  Tiglath-pileser,  Sennacherib,  and 
Assurbanipal  carried  on  a  traditional  policy  of  decimation 
and  enslavement ;  and  when  at  last  the  mother-state  was 
attacked  it  was  with  weapons  which  she  had  invented. 
The  Assyrian  kings  were  hardly  more  ferocious  than 
Nebuchadnezzar,  who  deported  an  entire  nation,  held 
them  enslaved,  slew  their  princes,  and  put  out  the  eyes 
of  their  king.  The  Assyrian  sculptures  and  inscriptions 
may,  therefore,  be  taken  to  represent  the  methods  of 
warfare  during  a  long  era  of  Babylonian  military  activity. 
At  first  vengeance  was  wreaked  upon  entire  communities. 
But  it  was  discovered  later  that  a  far  greater  triumph 
consisted  in  the  capture  of  living  booty.  Those  who 
offered  resistance  were  tortured  before  they  were  killed, 
while  those  who  surrendered  were  bound  hand  and  foot 
and  dragged  before  the  king,  who  placed  his  feet  upon 
their  necks."  In  certain  bas-reliefs  warriors  are  seen 
decapitating  prisoners  and  counting  the  dripping  heads. 
Sometimes  the  vanquished  are  undergoing  impalement, 
which  consisted  in  driving  a  stake  immediately  under 
the  ribs  through  the  heart.  In  a  piece  of  sculptured 
infamy  from  Khorsabad  we  discover  a  man  flaying  a 
prisoner  with  a  semicircular  knife.  Sometimes  the  head 
was  torn  asunder  by  means  of  iron  implements.  In  a 
bas-relief  in  the  British  Museum  officers  are  seen  pointing 
out  to  some  Armenian  ambassadors  the  tortures  which 
are  being  inflicted  upon  prisoners  from  Elam.  These 
and  similar  sculptures,  which  have  all  the  appearance  of 
having  been  taken  from  the  life,  and  are  full  of  the 
realism  of  history,  make  us  see  how  great  a  volume  of 
human  suffering  had  gathered  round  the  foundations 
of  those  vanished  states. 

23.  Thus,  in  describing  his  operations  against  Nistoun, 

1  Cf.  Nos.  53,  54  in  the  Nineveh  Gallery  of  the  British  Museum. 

2  Assyrian  Saloon,  British  Museum,  No.  3. 


I04  THE   NEMESIS   OF  NATIONS 

667-635     Assurbanipal   says  with   pride,   "  I   dashed   the   children 
^■^'        like  unfledged  birds  against  the  rocks  of  the  mountains."^ 
We  may  compare  this  terrible  inscription  with  the  cry  of 
revenge  of  the  captive  Jews  against  Babylon — "  Happy 
shall  he  be  that  taketh  and  dasheth  thy  little  ones  against 
the  stones"  (Ps.  cxxxvii.).     This  is  a  clear  evidence  of  a 
lex  talionis  carried  out  on  a  vast  scale,  and  inherited  as 
a  form  of  national  vengeance.     Conquest  involved  either 
extermination  or  slavery.      In  describing   the  sack  of  a 
city  Assurbanipal  says,  "  I  took  away  their  children  like 
troops  of  lambs."     It  was  at  the  fall  of  Sour  that  "  I 
flayed  alive  the  leaders,  and  covered  the  walls  with  their 
skins.      I  buried    some   alive,   and   others  were   crucified 
and  impaled,     I  caused    many  to   be   flayed  before   my 
own  eyes,  and  I  covered  the  walls  with  their  skins.     I 
placed   in    mockery  crowns   like   royal   crowns   on    their 
leaders'  heads."-     Again,  "I  burned  alive  1000  captives. 
I  expressly  spared  not  one.      I  piled  up  the  bodies  as  high 
as  the  wall."     At  Tiela,  "after  a  bloody  combat,  I  seized 
the   city   and   took    3000   warriors.       I   carried    ofi^  the 
prisoners,  the  booty,  oxen,  sheep.     I  burned  great  quan- 
tities of  spoil.     With  my  own   hands  I  captured  many 
prisoners  alive.     I  cut  oflf"  the  hands  and  the  feet  of  some, 
the  nose  and  ears  of  others,  and  tore  their  eyes  out."     In 
the  campaign  against  Pitoura,  "  I  crucified  700  men  before 

1 1 16  B.C.  the  great  gate  of  the  city."  ^  Tiglath-pileser  I.  appears 
to  have  been  more  bent  on  the  capture  of  living  enemies, 
because  he  states  that  in  Kummukh  he  took  6000  men 
whom  he  gave  as  slaves  to  his  own  people.* 

24.  Those  pictures  of  the  wild  and  chaotic  morning 
of  human  history  are  sufficient  to  discredit  Comte's 
"  philosophic  view  "  of  slavery.     Comte  says  that,  con- 

^  Cf.  Oppert's  translation  of  these  and  the  following  inscriptions  in 
his  Histoire,  pp.  77  et  sqq. 

»  Oppert,  op.  cii.,  79-  ^  Ibid.,  p.  88.  *  Ibid.,  p.  45. 


BABYLON  105 

sidered  as  a  "  military  institution,"  slavery  was  pro- 
foundly beneficial  {^profondement  salutaire)  both  to  master 
and  to  slave.  And  the  reason  he  gives  is  that  military 
activity,  which  was  so  indispensable  for  the  protection  of 
the  industry  of  primitive  society,  could  not  have  been 
otherwise  developed.  It  was  necessary  that  while  the 
warrior  went  abroad  the  slave  should  work  at  Ihome.^ 
Unfortunately,  as  we  have  just  seen,  the  warrior  went 
abroad  for  the  express  purpose  of  adding  to  the  number 
of  slaves.  The  military  activity  of  men  like  Tiglath- 
pileser  and  Nebuchadnezzar  had  only  one  result — the 
overcrowding  of  the  slave-market.  Indeed,  slaves  were 
multiplied  to  so  great  an  extent  that  not  merely  was 
free  labour,  if  it  really  existed,  destroyed  by  a  ruinous 
competition,  but  the  condition  of  the  slaves  was  ren- 
dered still  more  intolerable.  The  increase  in  their 
number  meant  a  reduction  in  their  value  and  a  corre- 
sponding brutality  of  treatment.  As  we  shall  see,  their 
price  was  often  lower  than  the  price  of  sheep,  and  far 
lower  than  the  price  of  horses.  Thus  the  actual  reason 
which  Comte  brings  forward  to  prove  the  advantages  of 
slavery  is  a  proof  of  its  deepening  sorrows.  His  picture 
of  the  average  slave  labouring  peacefully  under  friendly 
patronage  is  historically  false,  and,  like  many  of  his  mag- 
nificent generalisations,  rests  upon  rickety  data.  There 
is  one  other  fact  which  proves  his  theory  to  be  not  merely 
false  but  absurd,  and  it  is  that  slaves  both  in  Babylon  and 
in  Greece  were  compelled  to  go  to  war.  In  other  words, 
they  were  compelled  to  fight  in  order  to  add  to  their 
own  numbers,  since  every  prisoner  became  a  slave.  The 
human  market  became  more  glutted  than  the  cattle- 
market.  So  vast  was  the  amount  of  human  labour  com- 
manded by  the  kings  of  Babylon  that  the  wastage  of 
human    life   was    never   felt.      It   was   not   merely   that 

*  Sysihne  de  Politique  Positive  (Paris,  1853),  tome  iii.  p.  185. 


io6  THE    NEMESIS   OF   NATIONS 

labour  was  hereditary,  and  that  the  son  of  a  slave  was 
thereby  likewise  a  slave,  but  that  a  successful  war  or  a 
razzia  added  immense  numbers  to  the  servile  popula- 
tion. It  is  the  great  irony  of  the  history  of  slavery 
that  the  slave's  one  chance  of  humane  treatment  lay  in 
his  economic  value.  Thus,  when  slaves  were  scarce  it 
was  as  unprofitable  to  abuse  f/iem  as  it  would  have  been 
to  abuse  the  oxen  at  the  plough.  On  the  other  hand, 
it  was  precisely  in  a  period  of  great  military  activity, 
followed  by  the  deportation  and  enslavement  of  entire 
communities,  that  the  slave's  life  reached  its  lowest 
valuation. 

25.  Once  the  slaves  were  safe  within  the  triple  walls 
of  Babylon,  it  is  little  wonder  that  they  were  subjected 
to  the  sternest  discipline.  Otherwise,  the  State  would 
have  been  kept  rocking  on  dangerous  foundations. 
There  are,  indeed,  indications  that  outbreaks  took  place, 
and  that,  as  in  Greece  and  in  Rome,  they  even  reached 
the  proportions  of  civil  war.  But  we  hear  of  no  Baby- 
lonian Spartacus,  and  it  is  probable  that  the  servile 
masses  gathered  from  the  ends  of  the  earth,  speaking 
different  languages  and  worshipping  different  gods,  pos- 
sessed no  real  cohesion.  They  do  not  seem  to  have 
attained  the  solidarity  and  self- consciousness  of  the 
Roman  slaves  or  the  Spartan  helots.  They  were  a  vast 
living  debris  of  humanity — Syrians,  Jews,  Egyptians, 
Elamites,  as  well  as  Babylonians — and  if  they  possessed 
any  common  language  it  must  have  been  only  the  gesture 
of  suffering  or  resignation.  It  may  be  true  that  the  Code 
of  Hammurabi,  in  so  far  as  it  regulates  the  slave  traffic, 
deals  only  with  home  slaves,  i.e.  with  slaves  of  Baby- 
lonian origin.  In  that  case  we  may  infer  that  the  treat- 
ment of  aliens  must  have  been  even  harsher  and  was  a 
matter  of  indifference  to  the  law.  But  some  of  the  con- 
tracts which  have  been  discovered  and  deciphered  prove, 


BABYLON  107 

by  the  names  which  appear  in  them,  that  foreign  slaves 
were  continually  being  bought  and  sold.  Those  contracts 
were  certainly  legal,  and  hence  many  aliens  gradually 
acquired  a  kind  of  naturalisation  as  slaves.  As  in  every 
society,  so  in  Babylon,  there  was  a  perpetual  oscillation 
of  levels.  We  find,  for  instance,  that  ruined  freemen, 
debtors,  and  sometimes  criminals,  were  compelled  to 
become  slaves,  and  that  slaves  were,  on  certain  con- 
ditions, permitted  to  enjoy  an  ambiguous  liberty.  But 
we  are  able  to  distinguish  that  fixed  triple  division  into 
which  human  society  fell  from  the  beginning,  and  seems 
naturally  to  fall,  no  matter  by  what  name  the  State  is 
known.  In  Babylon  there  were  the  three  great  classes — 
the  Amelu,  or  aristocrat ;  the  Muskenu,  or  bourgeois ; 
and  the  Ardu,  the  slave.  This  is  practically  the  same 
division  which  we  found  in  Hindustan,  although  the  sub- 
divisions of  the  upper  classes  at  Babylon  are  not  so  clear. 
The  Ardu  was  the  slave  of  the  Amelu  and  the  Muskenu. 
But  we  have  no  means  of  discovering  the  numerical  pro- 
portion between  the  three  classes.  That  the  slaves  vastly 
outnumbered  the  other  two  there  cannot  be  the  slightest 
doubt.  According  to  some  writers,  the  number  of  slaves 
in  the  earliest  period  was  not  great.  This  opinion,  how- 
ever, appears  to  be  based  merely  upon  the  fact  that  no 
document  relating  to  the  division  of  hereditary  property 
in  that  period  has  been  found  to  contain  the  mention  of 
more  than  four  slaves  in  the  possession  of  one  owner. 
Thus  slaves  were  to  freemen  as  four  to  one.  But  so 
wide  a  generalisation  seems  hardly  to  be  justified  by  so 
few  documents.  Other  contracts  containing  evidence  of 
a  greater  proportion  of  slaves  might  be  discovered  to- 
morrow. Besides,  the  slaves  in  question  belonged  to 
the  household,  and  no  average  household  required  a 
large  number  of  them.  The  servile  ranks  were  filled 
not  so  much  by  domestic  slaves  as  by  those  who  were 


io8  THE   NEMESIS   OF   NATIONS 

employed  in  manufactures,  in  agricultural  labour,  and  in 
public  works.  There  existed  in  Babylon,  as  in  Athens, 
slave  proprietors  who  hired  out  the  labour  of  their  slaves 
as  they  hired  out  oxen.  In  the  contracts  which  have  been 
already  translated  the  social  position  of  the  slave  is  made 
clear.  In  the  oldest  documents  he  is  described  by  the 
word  sag,  i.e.  chattel,  thing,  object ;  or  it  is  equivalent 
to  the  word  "  head  "  when  applied  to  cattle.  He  is  not 
a  person.  Neither  his  free-will  nor  his  responsibility  is 
presupposed.  Whereas  in  every  contract  which  deals 
with  freemen  the  name  of  the  father  is  given,  in  the 
case  of  the  slave  no  family  name  is  mentioned.  It  is, 
therefore,  difficult  to  understand  the  statement  of  Oppert 
that,  "  far  from  being  a  mere  chattel  as  at  Rome,  the 
slave  at  Babylon  is  a  person."^  No  doubt,  as  we  shall 
see  later,  there  were  some  strange  contradictions  in  the 
Babylonian  system  ;  but  that  the  master  possessed  over 
his  slave,  as  over  every  other  part  of  his  property,  the^wj 
utendi  et  ahutendi  is  proved  by  the  last  paragraph  in  the 
Babylonian  Law  Code — "  If  a  slave  has  said  to  his  master, 
'  You  are  not  my  master,'  he  shall  be  brought  to  account 
as  his  slave,  and  his  master  shall  cut  off  his  ear."  The 
following  is  a  typical  and  business-like  contract  for  the 
sale  and  purchase  of  a  slave.  "  Sini-Istar  has  bought  the 
slave  Ea-tappi  from  Ni-Ni-ellati  and  his  son  Ahia  ;  the 
entire  price  is  ten  shekels  (thirty  shillings).  Ni-Ni-ellati 
and  Ahia  his  son  can  make  no  farther  claim."'  It  is 
often  said  that  the  slaves  were  used  like  chattels,  but 
it  would  be  far  truer  to  say  that  they  were  used  like 
animals.  As  we  have  seen,  they  were  counted,  like  cattle, 
by  the  head  (w^),  and  like  cattle  they  were  branded.  In 
the  Code  of  Hammurabi  (par.  226)  the  branding  of 
slaves  is  disinctly  mentioned.  The  name  of  the  owner 
was  often  stamped  upon  the  hand,  and  there  is  reason  to 

1  La  Condition  des  Esdaves,  p.  4.        *  Meissner,  De  Servituie,  p.  5. 


BABYLON  109 

believe  that  the  brander  of  cattle  was  also  the  brander  of 
slaves.^  Or,  like  dogs,  slaves  were  compelled  to  wear, 
probably  round  their  necks,  clay  tablets  with  the  name 
and  address  of  their  owner  engraved  upon  them. 

26.  But  if  they  were  used  like  cattle  they  were  often 
sold  cheaper.  It  is,  of  course,  evident  from  the  contracts 
that  the  price  varied,  and  no  doubt  the  fluctuation  was 
caused  not  merely  by  the  special  value  of  individuals 
but  by  the  state  of  the  slave-market.  In  the  earliest  times 
the  average  price  appears  to  have  been  four  and  a  half 
shekels,  or  thirteen  shillings  and  sixpence,  for  a  female 
slave,  and  thirty  shillings  for  a  male.^  But  if  a  fall  in 
prices  is  to  be  explained  by  an  overstocked  market,  the 
authority  of  Meissner's  statement  that  in  the  earlier 
period  slaves  were  few  appears  to  be  somewhat  weakened. 
At  any  rate,  the  misery  of  the  slave  might  be  measured 
by  the  fact  that  at  certain  times  he  was  to  be  had  cheaper 
than  a  sheep.  In  other  words,  since  a  sheep  was  of  more 
value  than  a  slave  it  received  greater  care.  Thus  in  the 
reign  of  Naboindos  a  sheep  cost  eighteen  shillings,^ 
whereas  not  much  earlier,  in  the  reign  of  Nebuchad- 
nezzar II.,  there  is  the  case  of  a  female  slave  who  was  sold 
for  two  shillings.*  Often,  indeed,  the  intellectual  gifts  or 
the  personal  attractions  of  the  finer  sort  of  foreign  slaves 
realised  prices  as  high  as  a  manch  (;^9).  But  the  price 
of  the  average  labourer  certainly  never  rose  as  high  as 
the  price  of  a  riding  horse,which  in  the  reign  of  Merodach-  1127- 
nadin-akhi  was  about  ^/^y,  los.  The  horseman  had  thus  1125B.C. 
more  reason  to  ride  his  slave  rather  than  his  horse  to 
death.     Even    in   the    reign    of   Nebuchadnezzar,  when 

^  Johns'  "Babylonian  and  Assyrian  Laws,"  p.  177. 

^  "  Pretium  servi  illo  tempore  multo  vilius  erat  quam  postea.  Serva 
enim  iam  4^^  siclos  emi  poterat  et  servi  pretium  inter  10  siclos  et  tertiam 
minae  partem  iactabatur"  (Meissner,  p.  3). 

*  Sayce,  op.  cit.,  p.  109 

*  Ibid.,  p.  78. 


no  THE   NEMESIS   OF   NATIONS 

Babylon  was  astonishing  the  world  by  her  magnificence, 
a  male  slave  was  sold  for  ^^4,  10s.  And  a  female  slave, 
together  with  her  child,  was  to  be  had  for  fifty-seven 
shillings.  It  has  been  supposed  that  according  to  the 
Code  of  Hammurabi  the  average  price  was  twenty  shekels, 
^■^-  £2-  The  paragraph  in  which  this  price  appears  to 
be  implied  (No.  252)  enacts  that  if  a  slave  has  been 
accidentally  killed  by  an  ox,  the  owner  of  the  ox  shall 
pay  to  the  owner  of  the  slave  one-third  of  a  mina  of 
silver,  i.e.  £2-  ^^^  ^^^  damages  here  awarded  are  in 
the  nature  of  a  fine.  In  the  paragraph  immediately 
preceding,  it  is  presupposed  that  although  the  owner  of 
the  ox  was  aware  oi  the  animal's  dangerous  character  he 
had  taken  no  precautions  to  ensure  the  safety  of  the 
public.  The  damages,  therefore,  may  represent  a  higher 
sum  than  the  value  of  the  slave.  In  any  case,  the  rise 
in  the  price  of  slaves  no  doubt  synchronised  with  a  general 
rise  in  the  price  of  all  commodities,  so  that  it  is  hardly  by 
means  of  such  arithmetical  calculations  that  we  shall  be 
able  to  prove  any  genuine  mitigation  of  suffering.  The 
one  fact  remains  that  the  vast  superstructure  of  Baby- 
lonian civilisation  rested  upon  a  basis  of  involuntary  and 
degraded  toil.  The  State  possessed  the  right  of  com- 
manding, in  certain  cases,  the  work  even  of  private  slaves, 
who,  at  stated  seasons,  were  compelled  to  join  the  ranks 
of  those  condemned  to  public  forced  labour.  Its  levy 
masters,  who  were  really  slave-drivers,  were  entitled  to 
enter  a  house  and  demand  the  surrender  of  all  such 
slaves.  It  is  doubtless  true  that,  compared  with  those 
enchained  gangs  of  captives  whom  we  see  in  the  mural 
decorations,  the  domestic  slaves  at  Babylon  enjoyed  a 
kind  of  liberty. 

27.  Some  writers,  however,  point  out  too  com- 
placently that,  after  all,  the  slaves  were  provided  with 
food  and  clothing,  and  that  otherwise  they  would  have 


BABYLON  1 1 1 

starved.  We  find  little  cause  for  retrospective  satisfaction 
in  the  fact  that  at  Babylon  men  starved  not  merely  for 
want  of  work  but  for  want  of  slavery.  It  was  precisely 
by  the  ruinous  competition  with  slave  labour  that  the 
freeman  was  driven  to  become  a  slave,  and  the  arguments 
which  are  brought  forward  to  prove  the  "advantages" 
and  "  privileges  "  of  slavery  appear  to  be  as  misleading 
as  the  arguments  of  Comte.  Those  so-called  "advan- 
tages "  had  only  one  result.  They  succeeded  in  making 
permanent  a  social  system  which  was  based  on  the  de- 
struction of  human  personality.  Moreover,  it  was  in 
Babylon  that  the  struggle  between  capital  and  labour 
really  began.  For  Babylon  was  organised  upon  a  capit- 
alist basis,  and  labour  was  not  even  paid  wages.  The 
fact  that  in  many  contracts  a  wage  is  mentioned  when  a 
slave  has  been  hired  is  extremely  misleading.  It  might 
be  supposed  that  this  wage  was  paid  to  the  slave  :  it  was 
paid  to  the  master.  As  we  shall  see  later,  there  are  some 
baffling  contradictions  in  the  social  position  of  slaves,  but 
it  is  now  admitted  that  "  theoretically  a  master  owned 
his  slave's  property."  If  any  property  happened  to  fall 
to  a  slave  the  master  claimed  it.  We  have  the  extra- 
ordinary anomaly  of  the  master  posing,  and  legally 
authorised  to  pose,  as  his  slave's  heir.  Even  when  a 
slave  had  married  a  free  woman  who  bequeathed  property 
to  him,  his  master  claimed  and  received  half.  No  doubt 
the  position  of  the  refined  domestic  slave  who  ministered 
to  the  vices  of  his  master  was  often,  in  Babylon  as  in 
Rome,  one  of  sinister  power.  It  must  be  to  that 
dangerous  class  or  to  the  minority  of  more  intellectual 
slaves  that  Oppert  refers  when  he  expresses  astonishment 
at  the  "  extreme  liberty "  which  the  servile  population 
enjoyed.  But  that  a  single  breath  of  liberty  ever  reached 
the  lower  strata  of  slavery  it  is  impossible  to  believe.  If 
the  "  advantages  "  of  that  condition  had  been  as  great  as 


112  THE   NEMESIS   OF   NATIONS 

Comte  and  his  followers  suppose,  or  rather  if  they  had 
existed  at  all,  it  is  unlikely  that  there  would  have  been 
so  many  efforts  to  escape.  Now,  attempt  at  flight  was 
so  common  that  the  purchasers  of  slaves  were  guaranteed 
against  the  risk  in  their  contracts  and  by  the  law,  Meiss- 
ner  states  that  we  do  not  know  the  punishment  inflicted 
upon  fugitives.  He  thinks,  however,  that  it  cannot  have 
been  severe,  because  there  is  recorded  the  case  of  a  slave 
who,  although  he  had  escaped  twice  and  had  been  twice 
captured,  is  yet  found  again  in  the  same  family.  But 
the  Code  of  Hammurabi,  discovered  since  Meissner's 
essay  on  Babylonian  slavery  was  written,  proves  that  the 
penalties  for  flight  were  excessive.  He  who  induced  a 
slave  to  escape,  or  harboured  the  fugitive,  was  sentenced 
to  death. ^  Moreover,  as  we  have  seen,  when  a  slave 
attempted  to  repudiate  his  master  the  legal  punishment 
consisted  in  cutting  off  the  ears.'^  Such  deterrents  in- 
dicate that  attempts  to  escape  were  frequent.  But  if 
slavery  possessed  any  advantages  for  the  slave  he  should 
never  have  sought  to  escape  at  all.  That  he  was  often 
bold  enough  to  run  such  an  enormous  risk  in  a  triple- 
walled  city  like  Babylon  is  the  surest  sign  of  his  suffering. 
His  identity  was  unmistakable,  because  he  was  branded, 
and  when  the  hue  and  cry  was  raised  the  entire  community 
was  interested  in  his  capture,  and  became  his  pursuers. 

28.  The  truth  is  that  enslavement  was,  short  of 
death,  the  most  dreaded  form  of  retribution.  Or,  rather, 
death  meant  freedom.  We  are  told  that  slavery  awaited 
the  disobedient  son  or  the  disobedient  wife,  and  there  is 
even  an  Assyrian  case  in  which  a  brother  enslaved  his 
sister.     Whereas  in  Hindustan  the  Sudra  was  allowed  to 

*  Code,  15, 16.  In  1893  Meissner  appears  to  have  changed  his  opinion. 
"  Wenn  Sclaven  flohen  und  gefangen  genommen  wurden,  erwarteten  sie 
eine  harte  Strafe."  Cf.  Beitr'dge  zum  alt  babylonischen  Privat  recht,  p.  7 
(Leipzig,  1893). 

2  Code,  282. 


BABYLON  1 1 3 

move  from  place  to  place,  in  Babylon  the  Ardu  or  slave 
was  enchained  within  a  given  area.  It  was  Babylon 
which  first  created  a  great  sedentary  population,  and  her 
example  was  followed  by  Egypt,  Greece,  and  Rome. 
Besides,  she  laid  the  basis  of  feudalism,  whose  social 
effects  we  shall  examine  later.  In  Babylon,  as  in  Europe 
during  the  Middle  Ages,  there  existed  Gleba  Adscripti^  or 
labourers  who  were  fixed  to  the  soil  and  sold  with  it. 

29.  It  is  interesting  and  even  important  to  contrast 
this  treatment  of  the  working  class  at  Babylon  with  the 
humaner  policy  of  Israel.  Nothing,  indeed,  is  more  re- 
markable in  ancient  history  than  the  mild  slave  laws  of 
the  Hebrews.  That  race  had  suffered  too  much  bondage 
in  Egypt  and  in  Babylon  not  to  be  touched  by  similar 
misfortunes.  They  alone  had  a  genuine  conception  of 
human  liberty.  Whereas  in  Babylon  death  awaited  the 
man  who  gave  refuge  to  a  fugitive  slave,  in  Israel  that 
refuge  was  commanded.  "  Thou  shalt  not  deliver  unto 
his  master  the  slave  which  is  escaped  from  his  master 
unto  thee.  He  shall  dwell  with  thee,  even  among  you, 
in  that  place  which  he  shall  choose  in  one  of  thy  gates 
where  it  liketh  him  best.  Thou  shalt  not  oppress  him  " 
(Deut.  xxiii.  15,  16).  It  is  certainly  most  remarkable 
that  this  tremor  of  kindness  ran  through  Canaan  at  the 
very  moment  when  Babylon  was  heaping  oppression  upon 
her  slaves.  And  yet  during  centuries  of  Christianity  it 
was  not  the  Hebraic  but  the  Babylonian  policy  of  en- 
slavement which  was  to  become  a  tradition  and  a  model 
in  Europe  and  throughout  the  world.  In  Israel  legis- 
lation was  actually  undertaken  on  behalf  of  the  slaves,  in 
Babylon  only  on  behalf  of  the  masters.  In  Babylon  the 
slave  was  an  animal  and  a  chattel ;  in  Israel  he  was  a 
person.  Every  seventh  day  the  Hebrew  slave  enjoyed 
rest  like  his  master,  and  after  seven  years  of  service  he 
was  free  (Exod.  xx.  10;  xxi.  2). 

H 


114  THE   NEMESIS   OF   NATIONS 

30.  At  Babylon,  If  a  female  slave  possessed  young 
children  her  price  was  greatly  reduced,  since  the  master 
was  thus  compelled  to  provide  extra  food  and  clothing 
with  no  return  in  the  form  of  labour.  Children,  there- 
fore, were  sold  for  a  song,  because  their  purchase  was  a 
speculation.  They  might  either  die  in  the  hands  of 
the  buyer  or  grow  up  unfit  for  work.  In  later  Baby- 
lonian law  it  is  enacted  that  under  certain  circumstances 
children  shall  be  sold  for  half  a  shekel  of  silver,  i.e.  one 
shilling  and  sixpence  each.  There  is  a  case  of  a  female 
slave  who,  together  with  her  child  three  months  old, 
was  purchased  for  1 20  shekels.  She  was  an  Egyptian, 
and  was  taken  prisoner  during  the  reign  of  Cambyses. 
Here  is  another  typical  contract  of  the  same  period, 
which   has    been   translated   by   Mr.    Pinches :   "  In    the 

522  B.C.  seventh  year  of  Cambyses  the  King,  the  month  Kislev, 
fifth  day,  the  Razamubba,  son  of  Razam,  has  given  back 
Asbumetana,  son  of  Asbutalika,  Kardara  and  Hattiya, 
their  wives,  for  two  and  two-thirds  of  a  mina  of  silver, 
to  Iddina,  the  magician,  son  of  Nabii-Ahi-iddin.  He 
has  given  them  up.  ArataruSu,  the  chief  of  the  field 
labourers,  has  declared  thus,  '  I  bear  witness  that  his 
money  has  been  taken.' "  Then  follow  the  names  of 
witnesses.  Mr.  Pinches  points  out  that  such  contracts 
indicate  that  slaves  were  sometimes  sold  on  condition 
that  if  the  seller  thought  fit  he  might  buy  them  back  on 
refunding  the  money. ^  It  is  thus  clear  that  the  vast 
system  of  kidnapping  which  formed  the  inexhaustible 
source  of  slavery  at  Babylon  was  legalised  at  every  point, 
and  was  controlled  even  in  its  details  by  the  State. 

31.  Perhaps,  however,  the  real  condition  of  the 
servile  population  at  Babylon  is  indicated  most  vividly 
by  the  word  binnu^  or  bennu^  which  appears  both  in  the 

'  "  Documents  relating   to  Slave-dealing  in    Babylonia   in  Ancient 
Times"  {Proceedings  0/  the  Society  of  Biblical  Archaology,  Nov.  1884). 


BABYLOX  115 

contracts  and  in  the  Code.  This  word  stands  for  a 
disease  which  specially  afflicted  slaves.  Scheil  translates 
it  as  "  paralysis,"  and  it  is  believed  to  have  attacked 
especially  the  mouth  and  the  hands.  It  was  so  deadly, 
and  rendered  the  slave  so  useless,  that  the  purchaser 
received  certain  guarantees  in  case  of  its  outbreak  within 
one  month  after  the  purchase.  The  Code  ordains  that 
*'  if  a  man  has  bought  a  male  or  female  slave  and  the 
slave  has  not  fulfilled  his  month,  but  the  bennu  disease 
has  seized  him,  he  shall  return  the  slave  and  shall  take 
back  the  money  he  paid"  (278),  The  fact  that  it  was 
a  nervous  disease  is  of  profound  significance.  It  indicates 
not  only  bodily  but  mental  anguish,  and  bears  witness  to 
centuries  of  ill-treatment.  Like  all  nervous  diseases  it 
must  have  been  hereditary,  and  the  unruffled  phraseology 
of  the  Code  hides  the  sufferings  of  generations.  Another 
glance  at  those  Assyrian  sculptures  which  we  have  already 
considered  will  make  it  easy  to  understand  how  such 
a  disease  arose.  For  we  sec  gangs  of  slaves  harnessed 
to  immense  blocks  which  they  are  dragging  over  the 
ground  while  the  overseers  are  urging  them  by  blows. 
Superintending  every  group  of  three  or  four  is  a  levy 
master,  and  invariably  the  rod  is  in  his  hand.  In  order 
to  understand  the  real  state  of  the  slave's  body  and  of 
his  mind  under  such  conditions  of  labour  we  would 
require  to  take  his  temperature,  and  no  doubt  we  should 
find  it  at  the  point  of  fever.  It  is,  indeed,  the  misfortune 
of  the  investigator  that  long  before  he  begins  to  apply 
his  thermometric  m.easurements  to  the  heat  of  human 
histor}'  the  matter  has  cooled.  Nevertheless,  we  are 
often  able  to  rediscover  by  means  of  single  words  the 
symptoms  of  a  vast  social  fever  and  disorder.  Ir'u5:i:e, 
like  every  other  moral  malady,  is  contagious,  and  brings 
with  it  not  only  mental  but  physical  suffering.  Accord- 
ing to  Jensen,   binnu  was  a  deseasc  which  affected   the 


ii6  THE   NEMESIS  OF   NATIONS 

muscles.  And  certainly  it  is  no  matter  of  surprise  that 
human  muscles  subjected  to  such  disproportionate  and 
interminable  labour  soon  broke  down.  A  vast  paralysis, 
moral  as  well  as  physical,  had  seized  upon  the  labouring 
population  at  Babylon,  and  the  slave  whip  had  produced 
a  hereditary  nervous  terror.  And  yet  these  trembling, 
wageless  slaves  were  the  source  of  wealth. 

32.  The  attempt  of  some  Assyrian  scholars  to  dis- 
cover modern  ideas  of  right  and  of  equity  in  the  juris- 
prudence of  Babylon  is  interesting  and  often  valuable, 
but   it  is  not  less  often  thoroughly  misleading.     It  has 
the  effect  of  antedating  the  era  of  justice.     Busy  rather 
with  the  language  and   the  grammar  of  the  documents 
than  with  the  human   lives  which  we  see  dimly  behind 
them,  those  scholars  appear  to  forget  that  it  was  living 
property  in  the  shape  of  men  and  of  women  that  was  being 
bought  and  sold.     When,  for  instance,  we  are  told,  in 
reference  to  the  Assyrian  contract  which  reveals  that  a 
brother  had  sold   his  sister,  that  that  stroke  of  business 
"  was    no  worse    than    putting  her  into  a  convent,"  the 
comparison  hardly  appears  to  be  valid. ^     Even  although 
in  this  particular  case  such  an  analogy  were  found   to 
be  appropriate,  it  is  a  strange  conclusion  that  "  nothing 
whatsoever  can  be  built  upon  this  single  instance  save  the 
fact  that   a  man  technically  had   the  right   to  sell    his 
sister."     That   fact    is    in   itself  sufficient   to   illuminate 
in   a   startling   manner   an   era    in  which  the   possession 
of    rights    involved    the    infliction    of   wrongs.      Many 
writers  appear  to  have   found  great  satisfaction  in   the 
belief  that  at  Babylon  slaves  owned  property  ;  but  if  wc 
examine  the  evidence  it  is  of  a  very  baffling  kind.     To 
begin  with,  however,  it  is  certain  that  a  slave  was  capable 
of  owning  other  slaves.     According  to  Mr.  Johns,  the 
slave  "  could  hold  both  men-servants  and  maid-servants. 
^  "Assyrian  Deeds  and  Documents,"  vol.  iii.  p.  431. 


BABYLON  1 1 7 

We  may  note,  however,  that  he  himself  is  sold  with  his 
slaves.  .  .  .  This  is  as  far  as  we  can  go  in  asserting  that 
the  slave  owned  property.^' ^  But  it  will  be  admitted  that 
this  is  not  very  far.  And  when  Mr.  Johns  states  that 
this  same  slave,  master  of  wretches  more  wretched  than 
himself,  "  probably  had  more  real  freedom  than  any 
other  who  ever  bore  the  name  of  slave,"  we  find  it 
impossible  to  adopt  such  a  method  of  valuation  of 
human  misery.  The  burden  of  these  men  who  were 
at  once  slaves  and  masters  "  only  consisted,"  says  Mr. 
Johns,  "in  their  tributary  condition"  to  masters  above 
them.  Let  us  suppose  that  the  burden  was  as  light 
as  a  feather,  and  glance  for  a  moment  at  the  slaves 
of  the  slave.  What  was  the  burden  of  their  con- 
dition ^  These  degrees  of  bondage  seem  to  lead  down 
to  the  strangest  moral  chaos  of  which  any  city  has 
ever  been  the  scene. 

33.  Even,  however,  although  slaves  owned  property 
in  the  ordinary  sense,  the  number  of  such  proprietors 
must  have  been  small.  Mr.  Johns  does  not  hesitate  to 
admit  that  there  is  no  satisfactory  proof  of  this  ownership. 
"Time  after  time,"  he  says,  "the  party  to  a  transaction 
is  called  Ardu  ba,  '  the  slave,'  of  some  one.  When  he 
buys  and  sells,  bearing  such  a  description,  is  he  the 
owner  of  the  property  or  is  he  merely  the  agent  of  his 
master }  .  .  .  Agency  might  be  generally  suspected, 
and  it  is  difficult  to  disprove."  ^  This  passage  appears 
to  throw  doubt  on  the  supposition  that  slaves  owned 
property  at  all.  Nevertheless,  it  is  necessary  to  explain 
the  state  of  affairs  revealed  in  the  following  case. 
There  was  a  certain  Nabu-utirri,  a  slave  of  Itti-Marduk- 
balatu,  who  was  a  great  Babylonian  merchant.  The 
slave  acted  as  a  money-changer,  and  presided  at  a  bureau 
de  change  in  one  of  the  streets  at  Babylon.  A  document 
^  Vol.  iii.  381.  2  Ibid.,  pp.  374,  375. 


ii8  THE   NEMESIS   OF   NATIONS 

has  been  discovered  in  which  his  transactions  and  his 
relations  to  his  master  are  made  clear.^  Thus,  on  one 
occasion  his  earnings  at  his  money-stall  amounted  to  five 
and  a  half  minae.  For  every  mina  he  was  bound  by  agree- 
ment to  pay  lo  shekels  to  his  master,  and  on  the  occa- 
sion in  question  he  paid  55  shekels.  Now,  this  curious 
relationship  is  to  be  explained  by  the  fact  that  those 
slaves  who  displayed  high  intellectual  qualities  or  com- 
mercial ability  were  employed  by  their  masters  for  pur- 
poses of  speculation.  If  a  slave  were  clever  and  energetic, 
it  was  obviously  good  policy  to  grant  him  his  liberty  on 
condition  that  he  should  pay  a  fixed  yearly  sum  and  a 
percentage  on  his  earnings.  As  Mr.  Johns  remarks, 
such  slaves  would  do  better  business  on  such  conditions 
than  if  the  master  seized  everything.  The  slaves'  liberty 
was  thus  the  result  of  a  bargain,  and  we  know  from  other 
contracts  that  if  the  bargain  was  ever  broken  by  the  slave 
the  penalty  was  re-enslavement.  In  other  words,  the 
master  had  become  the  parasite  of  his  slave  ;  and  if  such 
instances  were  numerous  it  is  no  matter  of  surprise  that 
a  society  so  constituted  came  to  a  violent  end. 

34.  We  are,  however,  no  longer  dependent  only  upon 
stray  business  documents  for  our  knowledge  of  the  inner 
life  of  Babylon.  These  and  the  letters  which  have  been 
discovered  and  translated  are  of  the  greatest  value,  but, 
after  all,  the  information  which  they  give  us  is  somewhat 
spasmodic  and  intermittent.  They  would  form,  at  best, 
the  basis  only  of  a  kind  of  patchwork  history.  But  in 
the  Code  of  Hammurabi,  which  was  discovered  by  De 
Morgan,  we  possess  a  document  which,  although  brief, 
gathers  up  in  a  very  striking  manner  the  entire  life  of 
the  State.  It  would  not  be  too  much  to  say  that 
before  this  discovery  had  been  made  Babylon  was 
scarcely  known.     No  mere  accumulation  of  sculptured 

^  Aus  dent  Babylonischen  Rechtsleben,  Kohler  und  Peiser,  i.  p.  i. 


BABYLON  119 

fragments  and  inscriptions  belonging  to  separate  epochs 
and  eras  of  her  existence,  and  no  mere  collection  of 
the  statements  of  ancient  writers  concerning  her  mys- 
tery, could  help  us  really  to  understand  her.  The 
Code  is  the  best  proof  of  that  political  cohesion  which 
she  really  attained,  and  of  the  continuity  of  her  social 
organisation  and  of  its  rigidity.  It  does  for  Babylon 
what  the  Laws  of  Manu  do  for  Hindustan  ;  and,  like 
Manu,  it  too  betrays  signs  of  being  a  recension  of  a 
still  earlier  legal  system.  Although  it  is  concerned 
with  many  other  things  besides  the  slave  traffic,  it  is 
too  important  to  be  neglected,  because  it  is  the 
authentic  picture  not  merely  of  the  day's  work  but 
of  the  ideals  of  justice  at  Babylon.  Its  existence  had 
been  long  suspected.  Fragments  had  been  found  in 
the  library  of  Assurbanipal,  and,  moreover,  numerous 
contracts  were  seen  to  be  based  upon  it.  But  the  world 
was  hardly  prepared  to  find  a  series  of  statutes  which 
indicate  a  civilisation  already  old  and  full  of  social  pre- 
judice and  of  the  struggle  of  class  against  class.  By  his 
letters  Hammurabi  had  already  been  known  as  a  vigorous 
ruler  who  spared  no  pains  in  the  redress  of  ordinary 
wrong.  He  was  the  sixth  king  of  the  first  dynasty,  and 
seems  to  have  reigned  about  fifty  years.  Some  writers 
reckon  his  date  to  have  been  2250  B.C.,  others  about 
2000  B.C.  At  any  rate,  it  was  he  who,  more  than  any 
other  king  after  Sargon  I.,  reorganised  Babylon  as  the 
political  centre  of  the  empire.  His  edicts  ran  through- 
out Mesopotamia.  Both  in  the  prologue  and  in  the 
epilogue  to  his  laws  he  styles  himself  "a  righteous 
king,"  and  one  born  to  deliver  the  weak  from  oppres- 
sion. Unfortunately  this  claim  is  by  no  means  justified. 
As  in  the  case  of  Manu,  the  entire  machinery  of  justice 
is  set  in  motion  by  Hammurabi  on  behalf  of  a  minority. 
It  is  precisely  this  strange  contradiction  between  theory 


I20  THE   NEMESIS   OF  NATIONS 

and  practice  which  makes  the  study  of  these  ancient 
systems  a  matter  of  modern  interest.  On  the  one  hand, 
we  discover  the  most  elaborate  precautions  for  the  main- 
tenance of  the  rights  of  privileged  individuals,  and,  on 
the  other,  the  destruction  of  rights  altogether.  Thus, 
although  the  Code  enacts  that  "  if  a  man  has  committed 
highway  robbery  he  shall  be  put  to  death"  (22),  the 
robbery  of  human  freedom  was  legalised  and  made  the 
basis  of  industrial  organisation.  It  was  a  crime  to  steal 
a  man's  purse,  but  it  was  not  a  crime  to  steal  liberty 
from  the  slave.  Again,  as  in  Manu,  an  offender  is 
punished  with  far  greater  severity  when  he  injures  an 
amelu  or  patrician  than  when  he  injures  an  ardu  or  slave. 
•'  If  a  man  has  knocked  out  the  eye  of  a  patrician,  his 
eye  shall  be  knocked  out  "(196);  but  **  if  he  has  knocked 
out  the  eye  or  broken  the  limb  of  a  patrician's  slave,  he 
shall  pay  half  his  value"  (199).  Here  the  damages  are 
to  be  paid  not  to  the  slave  but  to  his  master ;  in  other 
words,  if  it  had  been  the  master's  ox  that  had  been 
injured  instead  of  his  slave,  compensation  would  have 
been  paid  in  the  same  manner.  As  a  matter  of  fact, 
it  was  paid  at  the  same  rate,  for,  according  to  para- 
graph 247  of  the  Code,  "  If  a  man  has  hired  an  ox,  and 
knocked  out  its  eye,  he  shall  pay  to  the  owner  half  its 
value."  These  laws  are  sufficient  (i)  to  prove  that  at 
Babylon  the  average  slave  was  treated  as  an  animal, 
and  (2)  to  disprove  the  statement  of  many  writers 
that  he  possessed  any  "advantages." 

35.  The  Code  betrays  a  deep  knowledge  of  human 
nature,  and  there  is  hardly  a  paragraph  without  interest. 
The  following  enactment,  for  instance,  indicates  the 
keenest  observation  and  a  prolonged  study  of  motives  : 
"  If  a  fire  has  broken  out  in  a  man's  house,  and  one  who 
has  come  to  put  it  out  has  coveted  the  property  of  the 
householder,  and  appropriated  any  of  it,  that  man  shall 


BABYLON  1 2 1 

be  cast  into  the  self-same  fire  "  (25).^  Property,  indeed, 
is  the  main  concern  in  these  laws,  and  it  is  only  as  a 
form  of  living  property  that  the  slave  is  mentioned  at  all. 
The  Code  is  far  more  interested  in  trade,  building,  ship- 
ping, land,  and  marriage.  The  fact  that  burglary  v^as 
punished  by  death  is  a  proof  hov^^  early  and  how  fiercely 
the  rights  of  property  were  defended.  And,  indeed,  it 
was  only  in  so  far  as  he  was  property  that  the  slave 
obtained  even  a  chance  of  tolerable  treatment.  If  his 
person  was  respected  at  all,  it  was  not  for  his  sake,  but 
because  his  master  was  authorised  to  retaliate  in  case 
of  injury.  The  entire  system  is  the  genuine  product  of 
a  great  commercial  and  bourgeois  community  who  acted 
as  a  kind  of  buffer  between  the  aristocracy  and  the  slaves. 
There  is  even  an  amusing  instance  of  snobbery.  A 
veterinary  surgeon  is  placed  among  the  ranks  of  trades- 
men, inasmuch  as  he  is  said  to  receive  "wages"  or 
"hire"  (224),  whereas  doctors  and  men  of  science,  such 
as  shipbuilders,  receive  an  "honorarium"  (221,  228).^ 
We  are  surprised  to  discover,  however,  that  within 
certain  limits  it  is  not  merely  a  code  of  justice  but  of 
equity.  When  not  treating  of  the  status  of  the  slave 
it  enounces  the  sanest  regulations.  The  rights  of  aliens 
are  safeguarded  (40)  ;  the  relations  between  principal  and 
agent  are  made  clear  (100-107)  ;  the  responsibilities  of 
merchants  and  of  bankers  (124),  and  the  duties  and 
obligations  of  husbands  and  of  wives  (138-153),  are  all 
ordained.  Here,  for  instance,  is  a  law  which  modern 
states  might  be  glad  to  possess :  "  If  the  highwayman 
has  not  been  arrested,  the  man  that  has  been  robbed 
shall  state   on   oath  what  he  has  lost,   and   the  city  or 

1  The  paragraph  is  from  Mr.  Johns'  translation. 

^  Mr.  Johns  uses  the  word  "fee"  in  paragraphs  224,  228,  but  Scheil 
and  Winckler  emphasise  the  difference  by  using  respectively  salaire  and 
cadeau,  Lohn  and  Geschenk. 


122  THE   NEMESIS   OF   NATIONS 

district  governor  in  whose  territory  or  district  the  rob- 
bery took  place  shall  restore  to  him  what  he  has  lost " 
(23).  Now  and  again  we  stumble  upon  strange  moral 
surprises.  Thus,  concubinage  was  favourable  to  liberty, 
inasmuch  as  on  the  death  of  a  father  his  children 
by  a  slave  woman  obtained  their  freedom  (170,  171). 
Moreover,  whereas  in  Hindustan  the  Sudra  who  married 
an  Aryan  woman  was  visited  by  dreadful  punishment,  in 
Babylon  it  seems  to  have  been  not  uncommon  for  a  slave 
to  marry  a  free  woman.  What  is  more  important  is 
that  the  children  of  such  a  mesalliance  vjtro.  free  (175). 
There  are  signs  that  justice  was  slumbering  only  lightly 
in  Babylon,  and  was  sometimes  even  on  the  verge  of 
awakening.  Thus,  "  if  a  man  has  incurred  a  debt,  and 
a  storm  has  flooded  his  field  or  carried  away  the  crop,  or 
the  corn  has  not  grown  because  of  drought,  in  that  year 
he  shall  not  pay  his  creditor.  Further,  he  shall  post- 
date his  bond  and  shall  not  pay  interest  for  that  year  '* 
(48).  Such  a  statute  appears  to  sacrifice  the  creditor 
to  the  debtor,  but  at  least  it  is  an  attempt  to  aid  an 
honourable  bankrupt. 

36.  All  such  laws,  however,  were  framed  on  behalf 
of  those  who  already  possessed  property.  In  their 
shrewdness  they  are  typically  Semitic,  and  indicate 
that  the  power  of  money  had  already  made  immense 
strides  in  the  world.  Ruthless  as  the  Laws  of  Manu 
are,  they  nevertheless  contain  now  and  again  an  appeal 
to  the  more  generous  elements  in  human  nature.  But 
when  the  Code  of  Hammurabi  passes  from  the  regulation 
of  trade  and  banking  to  mention  the  slaves,  without 
whom  all  that  high  finance  could  never  have  existed, 
it  still  expresses  the  pitiless  language  of  political 
economy.  In  spite  of  itself,  however,  it  occasionally 
reveals  as  by  a  sudden  flash  the  dark  places  of  the 
immense   city.      "  If  a  debtor  has   handed  over  a  male 


BABYLON  123 

or  a  female  slave  to  work  off  a  debt,  and  the  creditor 
proceeds  to  sell  these  slaves,  no  one  can  complain  "(11 8). 
Not  even  the  slaves.      What  would  we  not  give  to  be 
able  to  observe  them  both   as   they  furtively   scrutinise 
the  face  of  the  new  master  in  order  to  guess  what  treat- 
ment they  may  expect  ?     Even  more  significant  of  all 
sorts  of  strange  crime  is  the  following  paragraph  :   "  If  a 
man  has  corn  or  money  due  from  another  man,  and  has 
levied  a  distraint,  and   the   hostage   has   died   a   natural 
death  in  the  house  of  the  creditor,  he  cannot  be  held 
responsible.     If  the  hostage  has  died  of  blows  or  want 
in  the  house  of  the  creditor,  the  owner  of  the  hostage 
shall  prosecute  his  creditor,  and  if  the  deceased  were  free 
born,    the    creditor's    son    shall  be    put   to   death :  if  a 
slave ^  the  creditor  shall  pay  one-third  of  a  mina  of  silver  " 
(115,  116).     Many  slaves  must  have  perished  in  those 
scuffles  in  the  private  houses  of  Babylon  before  such  a 
law  was  enacted.     But,  as  usual,  the  value  of  their  lives 
is   expressed   only  in   terms  of  their  master's   pecuniary 
loss.     They  never  knew  into  whose  hands  they  might 
fall.     At    any    moment    they    might    be    despatched  as 
hostages  to  work  off  a  debt  which  would  take  years  to 
liquidate   (117)-      For    instance,    we    possess    a    curious 
contract  in  which  a  man  agreed  to  give  up  his  washer-  ' 
woman  as  a  pledge  until  the  debt  was  paid. 

37.  There  is  great  difficulty  in  understanding  the 
exact  social  position  of  a  class  of  slaves  who  were 
gradually  evolved  out  of  a  luxurious  civilisation  and 
were  allotted  the  higher  domestic  duties.  As  we  have 
seen,  in  many  cases  these  men  appear  to  have  represented 
their  masters  in  business  and  even  in  the  law  courts. 
But  such  slaves  were  only  a  scanty  minority  in  the 
midst  of  a  vast  servile  population.  According  to  Mr. 
Johns,  in  Assyrian  times  the  slave  "  could  contract  like 
a  free  man."     But  according  to  the  Code  of  Hammurabi 


124  THE   NEMESIS   OF   NATIONS 

this  was  prohibited.  If  any  one  transacted  business  with 
a  slave,  except  by  power  of  attorney,  he  was  put  to  death 
(7).  Thus,  if  Babylonian  law  regulated  Assyrian  cus- 
toms, as  all  writers  maintain,  this  special  permission 
must  be  considered  as  an  exception.  It  is  perfectly 
likely,  however,  that  clever  slaves  gained  an  ascendency 
over  their  masters,  and  gradually  raised  themselves  to 
a  level  of  comparative  liberty.  But  when  we  are  told 
that  although  the  slave  possessed  no  property  he  could 
yet  buy  his  freedom,  we  appear  to  be  face  to  face  with  a 
contradiction.  If  the  property  of  a  slave  belonged  to 
the  master,  manumission  cannot  have  been  a  purchase 
but  a  gift.  That  it  was  a  gift  or  a  purchase  ever  within 
reach  of  the  great  mass  of  slaves  it  is  impossible  to 
believe.  The  general  statement  that  "  the  slave  could 
become  a  free  citizen  and  rise  to  the  highest  offices  of 
the  State,"  appears  to  transform  an  exception  into  a 
rule.  One  cause  which  is  said  to  have  made  promotion 
possible  was  that  the  slave  was  often  of  the  same  race 
and  religion  as  the  family  which  he  served.  And  yet 
we  are  told  that  "  the  large  number  of  slaves  had  been 
captives  in  war."  ^  There  must  have  been  some  difference 
in  their  treatment. 

38.  Even,  however,  when  the  slave  gained  his  liberty, 
it  was  a  precarious  liberty.  It  meant  merely  that  the 
tether  which  bound  him  had  been  lengthened.  It  was 
liable  to  be  shortened  according  to  the  caprice  of  the 
master.  Moreover,  liberty  was  taxed.  In  return  for  the 
great  gift,  the  slave  was  compelled  by  law  to  support  his 
master  by  a  yearly  income.  A  master  who  had  become 
bankrupt  might  liberate  a  clever  slave,  and  thus  be  able 
to  Hve  ever  afterwards  on  the  slave's  industry.  There 
is  a  document  in  which  it  is  stated  that  a  liberated  slave 
who,  in  defiance  of  the  contract,  had  ceased  to  provide 

^  Sayce,  p.  67. 


BABYLON  125 

his  master  with  "  food  and  clothing  "  was  recalled  into 
slavery.  But  the  men  who  enjoyed  even  this  ambiguous 
freedom  must  have  been,  in  the  eyes  of  the  vast  mass  of 
the  people  in  bondage,  a  hated  minority.  The  ex-slave, 
who  put  on  the  airs  of  a  lackey,  found  that  his  interests 
were  now  bound  up  with  the  interests  of  his  former 
enemies.  As  the  parvenu  generally  becomes  a  violent 
reactionary,  so,  the  emancipated  slave  frequently  developed 
into  a  tyrant.  Thus,  as  we  have  seen,  contracts  have 
been  discovered  in  which  slaves  are  actually  seen  to 
have  possessed  slaves  of  a  still  lower  grade,  so  that 
even  bondage  had  its  hierarchy. 

39.  It  is  surprising  that  a  society  so  organised  was 
capable  of  so  great  duration.  And  yet  from  the  be- 
ginning Babylon  contained  in  dangerous  abundance  the 
elements  of  her  own  dissolution.  She  invented  here- 
ditary luxury  and  hereditary  labour,  and  attempted  to 
create  a  mechanical  and  unnatural  relation  between  them. 
In  herself  she  was  a  world,  but  it  was  a  world  split  into 
hemispheres  mutually  hostile.  She  was  Capitalism  rest- 
ing upon  unpaid  and  involuntary  Labour.  In  sight  of 
so  much  suffering,  her  wealth  and  her  luxury  were  a 
kind  of  blasphemy.  Those  whose  slavery  made  her 
great  were  denied  even  rudimentary  rights,  and  they  were 
compelled  to  witness  her  insolent  parade.  They  had  no 
interest  in  her  continuance,  and  they  were  ready  to 
welcome  her  enemies.  Yet,  when  we  consider  how  often 
those  enemies  came  upon  her  like  the  sand-storms  of  her 
own  desert,  and  how  even  the  Assyrians  who  were  her 
sons  let  loose  their  matricidal  fury  against  her,  and  how 
she  withstood  those  internal  convulsions  which  are  never 
absent  from  so  great  a  State,  we  can  only  marvel  at  her 
vitality  and  resistance.  No  doubt  the  causes  of  her 
fall  were  not  merely  intramural :  they  were  also  extra- 
mural.    History   is   filled   with   irony,   but   perhaps   its 


126  THE   NEMESIS   OF   NATIONS 

most  ironical  fact  is  that  a  State's  most  deadly  enemy 
has  frequently  been  its  own  offspring.  The  real  external 
enemy  of  Babylon  was  Assyria.  Apart  altogether  from 
the  dynastic  troubles  which  brought  both  states  into 
collision,  and  apart  from  the  special  vengeance  of  a 
man  like  Sennacherib,  the  strength  of  Babylon  was 
being  sapped  by  secret,  impersonal,  and  economic  causes. 
Assyria  had  begun  to  challenge  her  commercial  supre- 
macy. Nineveh  was  nearer  the  route  to  the  Mediter- 
ranean, and  that  was  the  route  of  trade.  The  traffic 
which  used  to  reach  Babylon  stopped  at  Nineveh,  which 
had  become  the  new  terminus.  More  than  once  Babylon, 
conscious  that  the  way  to  the  West  was  now  effectually 
blocked,  attempted  to  cut  a  road  through  the  desert. 
But  the  desert  was  dangerous,  and  swarmed  with  hordes 
of  robbers.  Caravans  which  left  the  city  never  returned. 
Moreover,  there  was  no  water  en  route^  and  the  teams 
and  their  drivers  died  of  privation.  The  keys  of  trade 
had  irrevocably  passed  from  the  hands  of  the  mother  to 
the  daughter  State.  In  other  words,  we  notice  for  the 
first  time  the  shifting  of  the  centre  of  commercial  enter- 
prise from  the  Persian  Gulf  to  the  Mediterranean.  In 
the  great  circular  movement  of  the  world's  trade  Babylon 
once  played  an  immense  part,  and  that  is  the  chief 
reason  why  her  history  belongs  to  the  West  as  well  as 
to  the  East.  But  she  was  only  a  stage  of  the  move- 
ment, and  was  at  last  left  behind.  She  was  compelled 
to  face  enemies  on  all  sides.  Owing  to  the  rise  of  the 
Aryan  Powers,  Media  and  Persia,  on  the  eastern  frontier, 
her  grasp  on  the  shores  of  the  Persian  Gulf  likewise 
gradually  relaxed.  As  Assyria  blocked  the  way  towards 
Phoenicia  and  Egypt,  Persia  blocked  the  way  towards 
India.  Babylon  was  crippled.  No  doubt  she  rallied 
under  Nebuchadnezzar,  but  it  was  only  during  half  a 
century.     It  is  no  wonder,  indeed,  that  after  such  a  pro- 


BABYLON  127 

longed  and  tremendous  experiment  in  the  government  of 
men  she  began  to  show  signs  of  exhaustion. 

40.  The  disappearance  of  a  State  is  to  be  explained 
either  by  her  own  inner  disorders,  or  by  the  growth  of 
powerful  and  aggressive  enemies,  or  by  a  combination  of 
both  those  causes.  In  Babylon  they  combined  in  such 
a  manner  that  the  result  was  nothing  less  than  oblitera- 
tion. Yet,  just  as  in  war  the  moral  factor  is  to  the 
physical  as  four  to  one,  we  cannot  doubt  that  if  the 
walls  of  Babylon  had  really  contained  within  them  a 
coherent  and  united  people,  those  walls  might  never 
have  fallen,  or  at  least  they  might  have  withstood  still 
longer  the  siege  of  Nemesis  and  of  Time.  It  was 
because  the  State  was  fundamentally  divided  against 
itself  that  Cyrus  was  able  to  come  like  a  thief  in  the 
night  and  take  it  by  surprise  "when  the  roads  were  539  b.c. 
dark."  It  is  profoundly  significant  that  the  Aryan 
invader  arrived  at  the  very  moment  when  the  city  was 
plunged  in  debauch.  It  is  true  that  many  a  strong  and 
well-governed  state  may  succumb  before  still  stronger 
enemies,  but  it  is  far  truer  that  a  state's  moral  decline 
invites  attack.  Given  a  nation  organised  like  Babylon, 
how  could  she  last ,?  She  was  unjust,  and  there  is  no 
permanence  outside  justice.  The  fact  that  every  new 
conqueror  was  hailed  with  acclamation  by  her  populace 
'  is  a  proof  of  their  immense  weariness.  Both  Cyrus  and 
Alexander  were  received  with  shouts  of  joy  by  a  vast 
multitude  assembled  on  the  walls.  A  great  mass  of 
human  beings  sunk  in  slavery,  and  living  in  slums  where 
life  must  have  been  at  least  as  degraded  as  it  is  in  Shore- 
ditch,  Hoxton,  and  other  parts  of  modern  London,  can 
have  possessed  no  national  interests.  The  peril  of  the 
State  was  not  theirs.  There  was  labour  without  wages, 
an  immense  activity  without  any  well-being,  and  a  fear- 
ful monotony  of  existence.     There  was  justice,  but  it 


128  THE   NEMESIS  OF  NATIONS 

belonged  to  a  few,  and  had  never  penetrated  the  great 
dumb  labouring  population.  The  State  was  no  genuine 
organism  in  which  mutual  sacrifice  is  expected  from  every 
part,  or  if  it  was  an  organism  it  was  half  mortified.  The 
leaders  of  the  people  were  sunk  in  luxury,  and  when  the 
moment  of  danger  arrived  they  expected  slaves  to  fight 
for  them.  Babylon  was  great.  She  used  Science,  and 
she  used  Art,  but  she  abused  Humanity.  She  invented 
sundials,  but  forgot  to  regulate  with  justice  the  hours  of 
labour.  She  could  calculate  a  star's  eclipse,  but  not  her 
own.  No  State  has  been  more  guilty  of  the  waste  of 
human  life.  And  when  we  see  her  ruins  lying  like  a 
vast,  mysterious  autograph  scrawled  over  the  desert,  her 
history  appears  to  be  full  of  warning. 


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CHAPTER   IV 

GREECE 

It  is  a  hard  task  to  mend  the  broken  bridges  of  history, 
and  to  trace  the  old  disused  roads  of  human  kinship. 
Nevertheless,  the  study  of  origins  often  helps  us 
to  discover  a  startling  intimacy  between  peoples  geo- 
graphically remote.  The  first  appearance  of  a  nation  as 
a  fixed  community  is  only  the  last  stage  of  a  long 
wandering.  History,  which  is  the  diary  of  mankind, 
has  been  carelessly  kept,  and  sometimes  we  do  not  know 
whether  the  blank  spaces  and  the  meagre  entries  repre- 
sent ages  of  activity  or  of  stagnation,  union  or  disunion, 
peace  or  war.  Empires,  like  the  Empire  of  the  Hittites, 
have  almost  dropped  out  of  the  record,  and  have  left 
little  more  than  a  few  names  graven  on  a  few  tombs.  And 
what,  for  instance,  was  happening  in  Europe  during  the 
thousands  of  years  of  the  life  of  Babylon  ?  The  greater 
part  of  it  was  sunk  in  gloom.  Even  so  late  as  the  age 
of  Julius  Cassar  (50  b.c),  Europe  was  half  covered  by 
a  forest  which  stretched  from  the  banks  of  the  Rhine 
for  unknown  distances.  Cassar  made  inquiries  among  the 
Germans  regarding  the  extent  of  that  Hercynian  Forest, 
which  was  full  of  wild  animals ;  but  the  Germans  told 
him  that  although  they  had  travelled  through  it  cease- 
lessly during  two  months,  they  had  been  compelled  to 
turn  back  because  no  limit  to  it  was  visible.^     It  was, 

1  "  Neque  quisquam  est  huius  Germanias,  qui  se  aut  adisse  ad  initium 
eius  silvse  dicat,  cum  dierum  iter  Ix  processerit,  aut,  quo  ex  loco  oriatur, 
acceperit  ;  multaque  in  ea  genera  ferarum  nasci  constat,  quae  reliquis  in 
locis  visa  non  sint"  (De  Bello  Gall.,  vi.  25). 

131 


132  THE   NEMESIS   OF   NATIONS 

indeed,  partly  because  the  woods  were  so  dense  that 
agriculture  penetrated  Europe  so  late.  According  to 
Caesar,  neither  the  Britons  nor  the  Germans  of  his 
own  time  were  agricultural  peoples,  and  they  retained 
their  nomadic  habits  till  far  into  the  historical  period. 
Yet,  ages  before  the  sound  of  any  axe  broke  the  still- 
ness of  European  forests,  a  brilliant  civilisation  had 
bloomed  and  had  decayed  on  the  Greek  shore  which 
is  nearest  Asia.  It  is  a  far  cry  from  Hindustan,  or  even 
from  Babylon,  to  Argos  and  to  Athens,  yet  when  we 
arrive  in  Greece  and  attempt  to  examine  the  beginnings 
of  her  civilisation  we  are  compelled  to  look  back  to  the 
Orient.  The  Greeks  were  known  by  the  name  of  Javan 
or  Javanas  from  the  Nile  to  the  Ganges.  Some  scholars 
believe,  while  others  disbelieve,  that  the  word  is  Aryan  ; 
but  in  any  case,  in  all  its  forms,  European,  African, 
or  Asiatic,  it  represents  the  lonians,  who  played  so 
great  a  part  in  the  history  of  Greece.  The  writer  of 
the  Book  of  Genesis  (x.  2,  4)  knew  them  as  the  "  Sons 
of  Javan,"  who  inhabited  "  the  isles  of  the  Gentiles," 
that  is,  the  islands  of  the  i^gean  Sea  ;  and  this  reference 
implies  that  the  Greeks  carried  on  an  early  maritime 
trade  in  the  eastern  Mediterranean.  Indeed,  they  were 
known  in  the  Orient  long  before  they  became  known 
to  Western  Europe.  We  have  already  seen  that  one  of 
the  great  mysteries  of  history  is  that  their  language  was 
related  to  the  language  spoken  in  India.  But  the  racial 
chain,  if  such  it  was,  which  stretched  from  Asia  to 
Europe  was  snapped  at  various  points.  It  was  because 
we  found  it  snapped  in  Western  Asia  that  we  were  com- 
pelled to  fill  up  the  gap  by  an  account  of  Babylon,  a 
power  which,  in  ways  too  many  to  be  neglected,  influ- 
enced the  course  of  history.  But  now  we  shall  redis- 
cover in  Greece  certain  links  of  the  broken  chain — links 
of  language  and   even  of  religion,  if  not  of  race,  and, 


GREECE  133 

what  Is  more  important,  links  of  the  same  long  chain 
of  social  error. 

2.  Asia  Minor  has  been  described  as  a  vast  bridge 
connecting  the  Valley  of  the  Euphrates  with  the  IEge:a.n 
Sea,  It  was  over  that  bridge  that  many  early  move- 
ments of  races  and  of  trade  took  place  between  the 
East  and  the  West.  It  is  probable,  however,  that  the 
bridge  once  extended  from  the  Asiatic  to  the  Euro- 
pean shore  across  the  i^gean.  For  that  sea  is  full  of 
islands,  many  of  which  are  volcanic,  and  a  continuity 
of  soil  certainly  connected  some  of  them.  Thera,  for 
instance,  which  lies  between  the  Cyclades  and  Crete,  was 
once  joined  to  Therasia.  It  is  still  a  volcanic  centre, 
and  it  formed  part  of  a  great  seismic  system  which 
extended  throughout  the  ^Egean  and  made  its  influ- 
ence felt  on  the  mainland  of  Greece.  Geologists  suppose 
that  the  disaster  which  overtook  Thera  occurred  about 
2000  B.C.,  and  was  caused  by  the  subsidence  of  a  volcanic 
cone.  If  similar  catastrophes  took  place  throughout  the 
eastern  Mediterranean,  lands  once  united  became  dis- 
united, and,  like  Crete  and  Cyprus,  were  left  in  isola- 
tion. Thus  the  earliest  foundations  of  that  prehistoric 
culture  whose  continuity  we  observe  between  the  iEgean 
islands  and  Asia  on  the  one  hand,  and  the  same  islands 
and  the  Greek  mainland  on  the  other,  may  have  been 
laid  long  before  the  era  of  navigation.  However  this  may 
be,  there  is  the  clearest  evidence  that  before  the  erup- 
tion at  Thera  a  civilisation  whose  affinities  are  Asiatic 
as  well  as  European  had  flourished  early  in  the  island. 
The  oldest  name  of  Thera,  KaXAiVrj;,  is  admitted  even 
by  the  opponents  of  the  theory  of  the  Asiatic  origin  of 
^gean  culture  to  be  traceable  to  an  Asiatic  root.^  In 
degree    of   civilisation    Thera    stood     midway    between 

1  The  root  is  K/ia/,  and  it  is  believed  to  be  Hittite.     Cf.  Reinach, 
Chroniques  (f  Orient  {\%()6),  p.  489. 


134  THE   NEMESIS   OF   NATIONS 

Troy  and    Mycenas.     Beneath  its    tufa,   and   embedded 
in  its  lava,   modern  excavators  found  prehistoric  dwell- 
ings, full  of  stone  implements,  pottery,  and  even  stored 
barley.     No  metal    utensils   appear   to   have    been  seen, 
but  the  style  of  the  pottery  indicates  an  advance  on  the 
earliest   specimens   from    the    oldest    deposits    at  Troy. 
Whereas   the  primitive  Trojan  vases  are   monochrome, 
at  Thcra  they  are  sometimes  covered  by  floral  and  other 
designs,   wrought    in    different    colours.       On   the   other 
hand,  Thera  was  in  arrear  of  such  great  cities  as  Tiryns 
and    Mycenas    on    the    Hellenic    mainland,    for    among 
their   debris    traces    of   a    far    higher    and   later  culture 
have  been  found.     The  chronological   problem  remains 
unsolved,   but   it   appears   to   be   certain   that   during   a 
period   which    was    pre-Hellenic,   and    even   pre-Phoeni- 
cian,  the  south-eastern  coasts  of  Greece,  the    coasts   of 
Asia  Minor  and  of  Syria,  the  ^gean  islands  and  Egypt, 
all    shared    a    common   civilisation.     The    entire   period 
comprising  the  stone,   copper,   and  bronze   ages   ranged 
from    about   3000   till    1000    b.c.     The   stone   age   and 
the  bronze  age  are  seen  to  have  overlapped  each  other 
in  different  regions,  and  there  is  no  break  of  continuity. 
At  Tiryns  the  knives  and  arrow-heads  of  obsidian  are 
as  rudely  made  as  those  found  in  the  cave  dwellings  of 
Central  Europe.     Stone  hammers  and   spinning  whorls, 
corn-bruisers  of  granite,  porphyry,  and  quartz,  and  em- 
broidering needles  made  of  bone,  indicate  the  first  steps 
of  civilisation.     But  progress  was  rapid.    Pottery  made  by 
hand  was  replaced  by  pottery  made  by  help  of  the  wheel. 
If,  on  the  whole,   palaeolithic  industry  is  poorly  repre- 
sented on  Greek  soil,  the  reason  is  to  be  found   in  an 
early  contact    with    Oriental    metal-work.      Mycenaean 
civilisation   belongs   essentially   to   the   bronze   age,    for 
men    already    knew    how    to    amalgamate    copper    and 
tin.     Bronze    razors   have   been   found    at   Mycenae,   in 


GREECE  135 

Attica,  and  at  Delphi.  In  the  primitive  period,  how- 
ever, iron  was  unknown,  and  when  it  appears  in  later 
deposits,  it  is  in  the  form  of  ornaments.  Gold,  how- 
ever, was  known  early.  Homer  calls  Mycenae  the 
*'  much  golden,"  and  in  the  second  millennium  there 
was  an  active  trade  in  the  precious  metals  between 
Mycens  and  Troy.  The  resemblance  between  such 
manufactured  objects  as  the  vases  found  on  both  sides 
of  the  i^gean  and  in  Egypt  proves  the  existence  of  un- 
interrupted commerce.  At  Eleusis,  for  instance,  Trojan 
pottery  lay  side  by  side  with  pottery  from  Mycenae. 
Moreover,  the  closest  agreement  is  seen  to  have  existed 
between  the  architectural  systems  ofTiryns  and  of  Troy, 
and  the  same  forms  of  decoration,  such  as  the  spiral 
ornament,  are  found  in  Greece,  Asia  Minor,  and  Egypt. 
On  a  bronze  sword  attributed  to  the  sixteenth  century 
B.C.,  and  bearing  the  name  of  an  Egyptian  king,  Amen- 
hotep,  the  design  has  been  seen  to  be  similar  in  every 
respect  to  the  design  enchased  on  Mycenasan  daggers. 

3.  But  this  ^gean  civilisation,  which  thus  linked 
peoples  in  Europe,  Africa,  and  Asia,  did  not  consist 
in  mere  casual  borrowings  of  industrial  and  artistic 
method.  Among  certain  of  the  groups  a  deeper  cul- 
ture had  been  inherited  and  shared.  For  instance,  a 
system  of  writing,  older  by  many  centuries  than  the 
alphabet  of  the  Phoenicians,  connected  Crete  with  Asia 
and  Egypt  on  one  side  and  with  Argos  on  the  other. 
Symbols  discovered  in  Crete  are  found  to  be  the  same 
as  those  carved  on  the  gems  and  ivory  of  Mycenae. 
There  appear,  indeed,  to  have  been  two  kinds  of  Cretan 
writing — one  pictographic,  resembling  the  hieroglyphs  of 
Egypt,  and  another  linear  and  almost  alphabetic,  re- 
sembling the  early  script  of  Cyprus.^  Ideographs  of  the 
human  body,  the  human  eye  and  hand,  oxen,  birds,  fish, 
1  Evans,  "  Cretan  Pictographs,"  p.  5. 


136  THE   NEMESIS   OF   NATIONS 

arrow-heads,  and  pictures  of  the  crescent  moon,  all  indi- 
cate that  there  was  in  use  a  system  whereby  thought  and 
language  were  transferred  to  permanent  materials  such 
as  clay,  ivory,  and  stone.  It  is  a  remarkable  fact  that 
the  pictographs  were  used  chiefly  if  not  only  in  the 
eastern  part  of  Crete — that  is  to  say,  on  the  side  nearer 
Asia.  A  closer  scrutiny  has  shown  that  they  belong  to 
a  system  invented  in  northern  Syria.  Indeed,  this  dis- 
covery has  been  claimed  in  confirmation  of  the  theory 
that  the  i^gean  civilisation  had  an  Oriental,  and  more 
particularly  a  Pelasgian  or  Hittite  basis/  Among  the 
eighty  Cretan  symbols  the  majority  are  said  to  incline 
rather  towards  the  Asiatic  side,  and  the  view  has  been 
expressed  that  this  ancient  script  formed  part  of  the 
system  out  of  which  the  later  Phoenician  alphabet  was 
developed.  In  any  case,  a  common  language  and  a 
common  mode  of  writing  were  shared  among  cer- 
tain of  the  i^gean  peoples  who  traded  with  Crete. 
This  prehistoric  intimacy,  however,  was  still  deeper, 
for  religious  ideas  were  likewise  borrowed  or  ex- 
changed. A  mysterious  worship  of  sacred  stones, 
pillars,  and  trees  had  spread  from  Syria  through  the 
islands  to  Greece,  and  was  perhaps  the  central  element 
in  Mycenaan  faith.  Here  we  are  met  by  one  of  those 
startling  relationships  which  betray  the  entanglement 
of  Asiatic  and  European  religions.  The  word  Bethel, 
which  came  to  Jacob's  lips  when  he  awoke  from  his 
troubled  dream  under  the  Syrian  sky,"  reappears  in 
Greece  as  ButTi'Xo9,  the  batyl  or  sacred  pillar.  For 
the  pillar  which  is  guarded  by  lions  at  the  gate  of 
Mycenae   is   now   believed   to   represent  a   pillar   shrine, 

1  De  Cara,  iii.  449.    Cf.  ii.  134  et  sqq. 

^  "And  Jacob  rose  up  early  in  the  morning-,  and  took  the  stone  that 
he  had  put  for  his  pillows,  and  set  it  up  for  a  pillar,  and  poured  oil  upon 
the  top  of  it.  And  he  called  the  name  of  that  place  Bethel  "  (Gen. 
xxviii.  18,  19). 


GREECE  137 

and  it  takes  us  back  to  a  period  when  the  god  and 
the  altar  were  almost  identified.  In  the  struggle 
towards  purer  and  more  abstract  religious  concep- 
tions, even  the  monotheistic  Semites  found  it  hard 
to  abandon  those  symbols  by  means  of  which  they 
first  became  religiously  articulate.  But  Syrian  in- 
fluence appeared  in  other  ways  in  prehistoric  Greece  ; 
for  while  in  the  royal  palace  at  Tiryns  an  open  space 
was  left  for  the  altar  of  Zeus,^  the  great  Aryan  sky 
god,  a  form  of  whose  name  we  found  in  India,  other 
gods  of  Asia  were  to  join  Zeus  in  the  Hellenic  Pantheon. 
The  people  who  had  contributed  a  great  part  of  the 
Cretan  alphabet,  the  Hittites,  were  the  earliest  inter- 
mediaries between  the  Aryan  and  Semitic  religions. 
They  carried  Nana  of  Babylon  to  Asia  Minor,  where 
she  was  transformed  into  the  Artemis  of  Ephesus, 
and  later  she  became  the  Ashtoreth  of  Canaan.  The 
cooing  of  her  doves,  however,  was  early  heard  in  the 
TEgean  islands  and  on  the  mainland  of  Greece  as  far 
as  Corinth.  It  was  round  this  Astarte  that  many  new 
Aryan  myths  accumulated.  It  has  been  supposed  that 
because  in  the  Odyssey  the  dove  bears  nectar  to  Zeus, 
that  symbol  was  not  originally  or  exclusively  Semitic. 
But  surely  before  the  date  of  the  Odyssey  there  had  been 
time  for  Oriental  influence  to  work  upon  Greek  religion. 
Rude  clay  and  terra-cotta  idols  of  Astarte,  with  the 
doves  hovering  above  her  head,  have  been  found  in 
the  most  ancient  deposits  in  Greece  and  the  islands, 
and  they  belong  to  the  same  type  as  the  idols  of  Cyprus. 
Those  rude  images  buried  deep  in  European  soil  are  of 
profound  interest,  because  they  indicate  once  more  the 
immemorial  contact  of  Europe  and  Asia.  This  civilisa- 
tion which  was  kindled  like  a  beacon  on  the  Greek  shore, 

1  Adler,  p.  20.     If  Tiryns  was  not  founded  by  Greeks,  the  worship 
of  Zeus  must  have  been  introduced  by  the  Greek  invaders. 


138  THE   NEMESIS   OF   NATIONS 

ages  before  the  Greeks  of  history  heard  of  it  in  the  poems 
of  Homer,  was,  after  all,  first  lighted  in  the  East.  With 
Astartc  there  came  to  Greece  the  gold  and  luxury  of 
Asia.  No  one,  indeed,  has  been  able  to  discover  the 
original  centre  of  distribution  of  i^gean  culture.  We 
hear  now  of  the  influence  of  Babylon,  now  of  Egypt, 
Phrygia,  and  Phcenicia.  So  complex  a  civilisation  had 
doubtless  its  source  in  complex  causes,  and  perhaps  many 
of  the  theories  founded  upon  the  different  kinds  of  pot- 
tery are  as  fragile  as  the  pottery  itself.  So  far  as  origins 
are  concerned,|wc  are  left  with  little  except  a  series  of  in- 
terrogations. But  it  is  admitted  that  apart  from  Eastern 
influence  Mycenaean  civilisation  would  be  unintelligible. 
When,  for  example,  a  Mycenaean  artist  wished  to  repre- 
sent a  war-chariot  he  reproduced,  "  even  in  details,"  the 
chariots  of  Mesopotamia.^  Whereas  the  later  Hellenic 
peoples  knew  Oriental  art  only  in  its  decay,  their  fore- 
runners felt  it  in  its  prime.  Amid  their  older  stone  jars, 
stone  spoons,  and  stone  cups,  and  other  rude  domestic 
vessels  and  implements  which  have  been  disinterred,  we 
find  articles  of  luxury  imported  from  the  East  or  manu- 
factured after  Eastern  models — gold  necklaces,  bracelets, 
and  cups,  a  gold  diadem,  bronze  mirrors,  ivory  handles 
and  silver  spoons,  amber  pearls,^  and  gold  masks  for  the 
faces  of  the  dead.  The  stone  roofs  of  their  palaces  were 
chiselled  in  foreign  designs,  and  the  walls  were  adorned 
with  blue  glass  from  Egypt.  The  facades  of  their  royal 
tombs  were  an  imitation  of  Oriental  bas-reliefs.  They 
worked  in  agate  and  onyx,  chalcedony,  amethyst,  and 
jasper,  and  on  their  rings  they  reproduced  the  intaglios 
of  the  seals  of  Babylon.  It  was  as  if  the  East  had 
stretched  out  her  jewelled  hand  towards  Europe. 

4.  There  is   a   theory  according  to  which  this  pre- 

^   Tsountas,  p.  351. 

2  Amber,  however,  came  from  the  north. 


GREECE  139 

historic  civilisation  in  southern  Greece,  although  it  was 
under  a  great  debt  to  the  Orient,  was  essentially  a  native 
growth,  and  belonged  to  the  Achasans.  Another  and 
probably  a  more  correct  view,  however,  is  that  the 
ancestors  of  the  Greeks  of  history  were  not  merely  not 
the  founders  of  that  culture,  but  were  only  to  a  small 
extent  its  heirs.  For  if  Greeks  had  laid  its  basis  it  is 
difficult  to  understand  whv  their  descendants  should  have 
remained  so  long  untouched  by  its  influence.  The 
younger  generation  was  compelled  to  learn  anew  many 
arts  which  had  been  forgotten.  No  doubt  in  the 
sixth  century  Athens  was  in  some  respects  already  a 
brilliant  city,  but  the  reason  was  that  Pisistratus  had 
invited  foreign  engineers  and  artists  from  Asia  Minor  to 
his  court.  Greece  was  still  borrowing  from  abroad.  The 
style  of  the  earliest  Attic  pottery  is  inferior  to  that 
of  the  Mycenasan  vases.  Moreover,  the  Phaleric  ware 
betrays  the  continued  influence  of  foreign  models  in 
the  use  of  such  designs  as  winged  creatures  and  the 
lotus.  Even  as  late  as  the  beginning  of  the  fifth  century 
the  condition  of  Greece  was  still  very  rude.-^  It  was  not 
until  after  the  Persian  wars  that  Athenian  civilisation 
began  to  outrival  the  ancient  brilliance  of  the  Mycenaean 
age.  The  earliest  Greeks  may  have  thus  been  incapable 
of  absorbing  the  finer  culture  upon  which  they  stumbled 
when  they  reached  the  base  of  the  peninsula.  But  they 
appropriated  the  more  solid  elements  in  the  work  of 
their  predecessors.  On  the  Acropolis  of  Athens  there 
have  been  found  remains  of  a  primeval  fortress  which 
was  not  built  by  Athenian  or  even  by  Attic  hands,  but 
belongs  to  the  era  of  Tiryns  and  Orchomenos.  We 
have  little  means,  however,  of  knowing  when  and  whence 

^  Wilamowitz-Moellendorff,  Von  des  Attischen  Retches  Herrlichkeit^ 
p.  6.  "  Wirtschaftlich  blieb  das  Land  in  den  rohesten  Verhaltnissen  ; 
geistige  Cultur,  so  weit  sie  uberhaupt  existirt  hatte,  verkam." 


140  THE   NEMESIS   OF   NATIONS 

came  the  new  invaders  who  gave  Greece  her  final  language 
and  her  historical  name.  Tradition  points  to  the  land  east 
of  the  Adriatic,  and  Greek  peoples  already  familiar  with 
bronze  implements  appear  to  have  been  dwelling  in  Illyria 
at  least  at  the  beginning  of  the  second  millennium  before 
our  era.^  We  cannot  believe  that  they  entered  the 
peninsula  organised  as  a  nation.  It  was  not  until  late 
in  their  history,  and  perhaps  only  about  600  B.C.,  that 
they  possessed  even  a  common  name.  They  entered 
Greece,  as  the  Aryans  entered  Hindustan,  in  tribal 
formation.  We  are  apt  to  suppose  that  the  Greeks 
must  have  been  always  civilised,  but  they  had  passed 
through  many  rude  stages  before  their  first  appearance 
in  history.  Their  advance  into  the  new  home  was  slow, 
because  prehistoric  Greece  was  covered  by  dense  forests, 
and  even  in  the  Homeric  age  was  still  deeply  wooded. 
To  the  labour  of  conquest,  therefore,  was  added  the 
labour  of  clearing  the  land,  draining  its  marshes,  and 
fighting  its  Fauna,  such  as  the  lion,  the  bear,  the  wild 
boar,  and  the  wolf.  And,  as  in  Hindustan,  the  invaders 
were  soon  at  war  among  themselves.  A  common  lan- 
guage and  a  common  religion  did  not  prevent  the  race 
breaking  into  splinters.  The  history  of  Greece  is  the 
history  of  disunion.  And  no  doubt  the  fusion  of  different 
groups  of  the  conquerors  with  the  peoples  whom  they 
found  in  the  country  embittered  the  struggle.  If  even 
the  relations  between  the  later  and  larger  Hellenic  com- 
munities were  always  precarious,  we  can  imagine  how 
keen  was  the  war  as  the  soil  was  seized.  That  soil  was 
agriculturally  poor  and  was  incapable  of  maintaining  a 
great  population.  Hence  we  hear  of  forced  migrations 
and  displacements  as  communities  expanded  beyond  their 
early  boundaries  and  encroached  on  the  boundaries  of 
their   neighbours.      Violent  tribal   movements   and   col- 

^  Kretschmer,  p.  153. 


GREECE  141 

lisions,  indeed,  lay  behind  the  creation  of  all  the  Greek 

States.     When,  at  length,  successful  tribes  had  settled  in 

the  seats  in  which  we  find  them  when  their  history  opens, 

they  gave  their  names  to  the  landscapes  of  Greece.     Thus 

the  names  of  States  which  became  famous,  such  as  Elis, 

Pisa,  Messene,  and  Laced^mon,   can  be  traced   back  to 

the  names  of  primitive  village  communites.     Meantime 

we  are  chiefly  interested  in  the  fact  that  the  most  energetic 

of  the  Greek  peoples  were  never  content  until  they  had 

reached  the  seaboard,  for  it  was  the  command  of  the  sea 

which  shaped  the  main  destiny  of  Greece. 

5.   Homer's  "wine-dark"  bright  salt  sea  was  to  play 

a   great  part   in  the  religious  and   practical  life  of  the 

Greeks.     It  is  significant  that,  according  to  their  early 

traditions,  Poseidon,  their  sea  god,  had  fought  for  them 

at  Troy.     They  remained  true  to  his  worship,  and   on 

the  Acropolis  of  Athens  he  shared  honours  with  Athena. 

Whoever  has  seen  the  Temple  of  Poseidon  at  Psestum 

can  understand  the  awe  with  which  a  Greek  viewed  the 

mysterious  power  which  sunders  and   yet  unites  a  race. 

It  was  on  the  eastern  Mediterranean  that  the  first  great 

1  •  •       • 

advances   m   navigation   were   made.      We  saw,  indeed, 

that  boats  were  built  on  the  Indian  rivers  by  the  early 
Aryan  conquerors,  but  such  shipbuilding  was  of  the 
most  primitive  kind.  It  is  in  the  European  languages 
that  we  first  find  a  common  word  for  "  mast."  The 
invention  of  mast  and  sail,  the  study  of  the  winds  and 
of  their  locomotive  power,  meant  a  new  era  for  the  world. 
The  Greeks  early  took  advantages  of  such  discoveries. 
For  although  the  Phoenicians  were  their  immediate  fore- 
runners in  maritime  supremacy,  the  Greeks  had  reached 
Cyprus  before  they  knew  the  Phoenician  alphabet.  And 
the  ^gean  islands  and  the  coasts  of  Asia  Minor  received 
the  overflow  of  their  population  as  early  as  the  thirteenth 
century  B.C.     After  a  few  centuries  they  would  be  sailing 


142  THE   NEMESIS   OF  NATIONS 

westwards.      One  of  those   facts  which   suddenly  fore- 
shorten for  us  the  perspective  of  history  is  Thucydides' 
casual  statement  that  a  Greek  people,  the  Phocaeans,  who 
owned  a  strong  navy,  founded  Marseilles.^     It  is  right 
to  dwell  upon  this  seizure  of  sea-power  by  the  Greeks, 
because  it  marked  the  first  great  intervention  of  Europe 
in  the   world's  affairs,  and  it  is  precisely  owing  to  her 
maritime    supremacy   over    Asia    and    Africa    that    that 
intervention    has   been   so    powerful   and    so   prolonged. 
The  coast-line  of  Europe  is  far  nearer  her  centre  than 
the  Asiatic  coast-line  to  the  corresponding  centre  in  Asia, 
and   Europe    produced   a   greater    maritime   population. 
No  doubt  there  was  early  traffic  on  the  Indian  Ocean,  the 
Persian  Gulf,  and  the  Red  Sea,  but  that  finer  seamanship 
was  taught  on  the  Mediterranean  was  made  known  to 
the  fleet  of  Xerxes.     The  real  study  of  the  winds  began 
on  the  coasts  of  Europe,  and  it  is  there  that  naval  vigour 
was  created.      It  is  worth  noticing,  too,  that  there  is  a 
great    contrast    between    the    sultry    Persian    Gulf,    the 
poison  wind  of  the  desert,  the  hot  languorous  coasts  of 
Arabia,  and    the   clean   wind   and  foam   of  the   seas   of 
Greece.     As  we  leave  Asia  and  approach  Europe  there 
is  a  certain  fall  of  temperature,  and  it  has  its  counterpart 
in  history.     The  pulse  of  Europe  has  never  been  quite 
so  feverish  as  the  pulse  of  Asia.     We  shall  meet  nothing 
altogether    like  the    torment   of   Babylon.     The  hordes 
of  Asia  lie  behind.     And  although  Eastern  Europe  and 
Western  Asia  were   still  to  be  entangled  during   many 
ages,  yet   Humanity's  next   great  experiment  was  to  be 
in  the  West.       In   the  Odyssey  the  Elysian  Fields  are 
placed  westward,  in  the  setting  sun. 

6.  Although  the  Greeks  appear  to  have  possessed  no 
distinct  word  to  express  the  modern  idea  of  climate,  yet 
Strabo   praises   the   coasts   of   Greece,  and   especially  of 
^  I.  14.     The  date  was  about  600  B.C. 


GREECE 


H3 


Laconia,  for  their  invigorating  air.  He,  too,  notices  that 
the  temperature  is  lower  than  in  Asia,^  and  that  on  the 
European  coasts  life  is  busier.  Maritime  cities  are  more 
numerous,  and  "the  arts  are  more  flourishing."  Strabo 
had  forgotten,  however,  that  once  the  Mediterranean  had 
been  a  highway  of  Asiatic  trade.  Before  the  iEgean 
became  a  "  Greek  sea "  it  was  a  Phoenician  sea.  It 
would  be  dangerous  to  say  that  it  was  from  the  Phoe- 
nicians that  the  Greeks  learned  seamanship,  because 
Greek  nautical  terms  betray  no  Phoenician  influence. 
Nevertheless,  the  statements  of  Homer  and  of  Thucy- 
dides,  and  the  archaeological  evidence  of  Phoenician 
activity,  even  on  the  Greek  mainland,  prove  that  during 
some  two  or  three  centuries  the  Phoenicians  enjoyed  a 
maritime  lordship.  Some  scholars  believe  that  such 
words  as  Megara,  Salamis,  Marathon,  and  Melite  can  be 
explained  only  on  the  supposition  of  Semitic  colonisation 
in  Greece.^  Thebes  in  Boeotia  was  full  of  Semitic 
tradition.  Thus  piratical  descents  on  the  Greek  coast 
must  have  been  frequent.  And  it  is  remarkable  that  the 
Greek  word  for  pirate  is  of  Phoenician  origin.^  Piracy, 
in  fact,  was  the  first  form  of  sea-borne  commerce.  There 
was  a  wind  which  the  Greeks  called  the  "  Phoenician 
wind,"  and  it  blew  from  the  south-east.  It  brought 
over  from  Asia  boats  with  purple  sails,  manned  by  those 
Phoenicians  whom  Homer  calls  "  famous  mariners," 
"  greedy  merchantmen."  The  ^gean,  thickly  studded 
with  islands,  invited  navigation,  for  in  clear  weather 
one  island  was  often  visible  from  another,  and  sailors 
sailed  from  cape  to  cape.  The  History  of  Herodotus 
opens  with  a  vivid    picture   of  a  Phoenician    bazaar    at 

1  II.  5,  i8. 

2  "  Leere  Spielereien,"  says  Beloch,  Geschichfe,  i.  p.  76.  On  the 
other  hand,  he  admits  (p.  74)  that  before  the  eighth  century  Phcenician 
shippers  frequently  landed  in  Greece.     Cf.  Busolt,  Geschichte,  i.  p.  52. 

^  Lenormant,  i.  p.  54. 


144  THE   NEMESIS   OF   NATIONS 

Argos,  and  we  see  in  a  flash  the  strange  chaos  of  the 
Mediterranean  in  that  early  age.  The  Phoenicians,  we 
are  told,  exposed  their  merchandise  on  the  beach  for 
about  five  or  six  days.  After  many  bargains  had  been 
made,  some  women,  still  intent  upon  purchases,  came 
down  to  the  shore,  and  among  them  was  lo,  the  daughter 
of  the  king.  She  and  her  friends  were  standing  near 
the  sterns  of  the  ships,  when  the  Phoenician  sailors  with 
a  general  shout  rushed  upon  them,  and  carried  off  lo 
and  her  friends  to  Egypt. ^  Thus  kidnapping  was 
common.  Thucydides  tells  us  that  there  was  a  time 
when  no  disgrace  was  attached  to  piracy.  But  the 
Phoenician  sails  seen  on  the  horizon  must  have  often 
brought  terror  to  the  islanders.  Before  proper  com- 
mercial relations  were  established,  the  Phoenicians  seized 
hy  force  majeure  the  raw  materials  for  their  manufactures. 
It  has  been  pointed  out  by  modern  writers  that  not  the 
Phoenicians  but  the  Greeks  held  the  supplies  of  iron. 
As  long,  however,  as  the  Greeks  were  still  weak  in  navies 
and  in  land  forces,  they  were  probably  compelled  to 
supply  the  iron  to  their  more  powerful  rivals.  The 
Phoenicians  took  sulphur  and  alum  from  Melos,  emery 
from  Naxos,  gold  from  Thasos,  and  they  ransacked  the 
islands  and  the  mainland  for  slaves.  "They  traded," 
says  Ezekiel,  "  the  persons  of  men."  Piracy,  indeed,  was 
not  put  down,  and  commerce  on  fair  principles  was  not 
carried  on,  until  the  Greeks  began  to  increase  the  number 
of  their  ships.  It  was  only  when  they  met  the  Phoeni- 
cians on  equal  terms  on  the  sea  that  piracy  was  checked 
and  barter  was  established.  The  Achaeans  bartered  iron 
for  wine.  The  oldest  Phoenician  city  was  Byblos,  which 
gave  its  name  to  a  wine  that  was  drunk  in  Crete,  in 
Chios,  in  Naxos,  and  in  Greece.  The  date-palm,  too, 
appears  to  have  spread  to  the  islands  from  Phoenicia,  the 

1  I.  I. 


GREECE  145 

land  of  palms.     The  Phoenicians  carried  Asiatic  freights. 
Hence  was  prolonged  that  Oriental  influence  which,  as 
we   saw,   had    already    been    deeply    felt   by    Mycenaean 
art.     It  is  believed,  for  instance,  that  it  was   from  the 
heavy  embroidery   of  Assyria    that  Greek  artists   chose 
some  of  their   early  designs.     But   Greece    never  came 
into   direct  relations  with   Assyria,  and  the   Phoenicians 
appear    to  have    acted    as    middlemen.     It  is  even  held 
that    they    were    the    means    of    transmitting    to    the 
Greeks  '*  the   alphabet  of  art  "  as  well   as   the  alphabet 
of  language.     Scenes  which  Homer  describes  as  having 
adorned     the    shield    of  Achilles    are    rediscovered    on 
Phoenician  vases,  and  such  vases  or  similar  Oriental  work 
had  been  the  basis  of  the  poet's  description.     The  artistic 
traditions  of   the    Valley  of   the    Euphrates   were    thus 
brought  to  Europe,  and   sometimes  the  actual   gestures 
and  attitudes  in  Oriental   design  were  reproduced.     Art 
and  trade,  indeed,  became  international  at  a  far   earlier 
date  than  we  are  apt  to  suppose.     Phoenicia,  as  broker 
between  East  and  West,  not  only  brought  Asiatic  things 
to   Europe,   but  took   European   things   to    Asia.     For 
instance,  much  of  the  famous  Tyrian  purple  was  manu- 
factured from  the  murex  which  was   discovered   on   the 
coasts  of  Greece.     That  industry,  however,  was  a  very 
old  one,  because  vase  fragments  with  representations  of 
the  purple  shell  were  found  among  the  ruins  of  Mycenae 
and  Tiryns.     But  the  Phoenicians  appear  to  have  inherited 
the  markets  of  the   Mycenasan  age.     Their  first  hostile 
contact    with    the   Greeks    probably  took    the    form   of 
fishery  disputes,  since  off   the  Greek   coasts  a  specially 
valuable  species    of  the    murex   was    found.     The  ships 
of  the  strangers  arrived  every  spring,  and  no   doubt   it 
was  from  the  purple  that  the  Greeks  gave  the   Phoeni- 
cians their  name.     It  used  to  be  supposed  that  "  Phoeni- 
cian "   should    be    derived    from    the   Greek   word  for 


146  THE   NEMESIS   OF   NATIONS 

"palm-tree"  [(poivi^),  because  a  palm-tree  is  found  on 
the  coats  of  arms  of  Carthage  and  Tyre.'^  But  the 
primary  meaning  of  the  Greek  word  phcenix  was 
"  purple,"  and  the  Greeks  knew  the  purple  before 
they  saw  the  palm-trees  of  Phoenicia.  The  dye  was  of 
so  great  value  that  the  Greeks  soon  began  to  make  it  for 
themselves,  and  the  fame  of  their  own  manufacture 
spread  into  Asia,  where  it  rivalled  the  dyes  of  India 
and  of  Babylon.  For  when  Alexander  the  Great  cap- 
tured Susa  he  discovered  among  its  treasures  5000 
talents  in  weight  of  purple  silk  which,  according  to 
Plutarch,  had  been  dyed  in  Greece.  At  that  time 
Phoenician  trade  in  the  eastern  Mediterranean  had 
dwindled,  and  the  Greeks  had  surpassed  Orientals  both 
400  B.C.  in  manufactures  and  in  art.  For  the  day  came  when 
Greek  vases  were  in  demand  on  both  sides  of  the  Medi- 
terranean and  as  far  as  Etruria,  when  Greek  architecture 
and  ornament  were  seen  in  Syria  and  at  Carthage,  and 
when  Greek  music  was  heard  at  Sidon.  Phoenicia  was 
like  a  swing-door  which  opens  both  ways.  At  one 
moment  Oriental  influence  passed  through,  and  at  another 
Greek  influence  passed  back.  We  have  already  seen 
that  a  primitive  alphabet  was  known  to  the  Mycenaean 
age,  but  the  alphabet  which  was  used  by  i?Lschylus  and 
Aristotle  was  of  Phoenician  origin,  and  it  was  Phoenicia's 
greatest  gift.  Greece,  in  fact,  was  being  equipped  for 
her  historical  task  by  a  study  of  Oriental  methods  and 
achievements.  With  the  help  of  the  East  she  became 
articulate,  and  it  was  another  Eastern  invention — coinage 
— which  consolidated  her  economic  system.  It  seems, 
however,  that  even  in  the  Homeric  age  the  Greeks  pos- 
sessed a  unit  of  weight,  the  Talanton,'"^  or  the  value  of  a 
cow  in  gold.     Metallic  currency  is  usually  supposed  to 

^  Movers,  p.  2. 

2  Ridgeway,  "Origin  of  Metallic  Currency,"  p.  304. 


GREECE  147 

have  been  invented  in  Lydia,  and  afterwards  to  have 
spread  towards  Greece.  But  the  discovery  of  silver 
iEginetan  coins  which  seem  to  be  older  than  the  oldest 
silver  coins  of  Asia  Minor,  has  recently  ^  raised  the 
question  whether,  after  all,  Greece  owed  her  currency 
to  Eastern  influence.  Coins,  however,  may  have  been 
used  as  private  pledges  in  Greece  before  the  State  set  its 
seal  upon  them  and  guaranteed  their  value.  On  the 
authority  of  Herodotus,  Lydian  kings  are  believed  to 
have  been  the  first  to  accept  this  responsibility.  In  any 
case,  the  influence  of  Eastern  measures  of  value  on  the 
Greek  system  is  again  made  evident  by  the  adoption 
of  the  Babylonian  unit,  the  mina.  For  its  introduction 
stimulated  Greek  commercial  enterprise. 

7.  Ancient  trade  was  peculiarly  connected  with 
ancient  religion.  We  find,  for  example,  on  the  early 
^ginetan  coins  which  circulated  in  Greece  the  symbol 
of  Astarte,  the  Phoenician  goddess  of  trade  as  well  as 
of  love.  We  have  already  seen  that  she  too  was  known 
among  the  older  iEgean  peoples.  But  it  was  at  the 
hands  of  Greek  artists  that  she  received  a  finer  form 
of  plastic  beauty  than  ever  an  Asiatic  artist  gave  her. 
The  discovery  of  a  Semitic  shrine  at  Thebes,  and  of 
traces  of  the  worship  of  Astarte  at  Corinth,  seem  to 
make  it  idle  to  deny  that  Phoenician  settlements  had 
once  actually  taken  place  on  the  mainland.  But  with 
Astarte  came  her  bridegroom  Adonis.  In  the  history 
of  belief  there  is  probably  no  more  remarkable  fact  than 
that  the  Adonis  known  to  the  Greeks  possessed  one  of 
the  names  by  which  the  children  of  Israel  knew  Jehovah. 
When  that  name  (Adon,  Adonai)  reached  Europe  its 
meaning  had  undergone  an  extraordinary  change.  Not, 
indeed,  that  the  Phoenician  conception  of  a  god  of  beauty 
and  of  passion  had  not  even  penetrated  Israel,  and 
^  "  Historical  Greek  Coins,"  by  G.  F.  Hill,  1906. 


148  THE   NEMESIS   OF   NATIONS 

had  not  been  denounced  by  her  prophets.    Ezekiel  throws 
a  very  startling  light  upon  the  dangers  which  threatened 
to  change  the  religion  of  Jehovah  into  a  Phoenician  reli- 
gion of  nature.     Adonis,  or  Tammuz,  was  once  actually 
worshipped  by  the  Israelites.    Ezekiel  saw  "  women  weep- 
ing for  Tammuz,"  and  "  the  thick  cloud  of  incense  that 
went  up  "  in   that  god's  honour,  and  "  the  abominations 
which  the  ancients  of  the  house  of  Israel "  practised  in 
the  god's  name.^     This  is  a  proof  that  even  the  Israelites 
had  felt  that   current  of  strange  desire  which  troubled 
all    forms    of   ancient   worship.     For    the    adoration  of 
Adonis  had  spread  far  and  wide  on  both   sides  of  the 
Mediterranean.^     Wherever  the  Phoenicians  went  Aphro- 
dite (Astarte)  and  Adonis  (Tammuz)  went  with  them. 
In  the  island  of  Cythera  Astarte   had   a   temple.     But 
Cythera  was  only  a  stepping-stone  to  the  Greek  main- 
land, and  there  too   the   new  worship  took  root.      At 
Cape   Malea  there  was   a   city  called  Sidas,  a  colony  of 
Sidon,    and    the    colonists    brought    their    idols.      And 
although   in  the   end   the   Phoenicians  were  driven   out, 
their  gods  remained,  Aphrodite  and  Adonis,  representing 
the  passion  of  Asia. 

8.  That  in  the  crowded  mythology  of  Greece  there 
were  other  gods  of  Asiatic,  and  especially  of  Semitic 
character,  there  can  be  no  doubt  at  all.  Melkart  of 
Tyre,  for  instance,  was  known  to  the  Greeks  as  Meli- 
kertes,  and  was  identified  with  Hercules.  All  the 
ancient  mythologies,  however,  were  hospitable  to  new 
gods.  The  maritime  Greeks  came  in  contact  with 
various  forms  of  worship,  and  hence  it  happened  that 

^  Ezek.  viii. 

^  "  Comment  se  fit  I'association  du  culte  du  Tres-Haut  (Elioun)  avec 
le  culte  de  Tammuz  ?  Ce  culte  fut  il  une  forme  organique  et  mysterieuse 
de  la  religion  du  Dieu  supreme  ?  Ou  bien  y  eut-il  Ik  un  de  ces  amal- 
games  si  frequents  dans  I'histoire  des  cultes  antiques?  On  I'ignore." — 
Renan,  p.  235. 


GREECE  149 

their  religion,  which  was  fundamentally  Aryan,  was  not 
closed  against  Semitic  influences.  But  the  central  god 
of  Greece,  Zeus,  was  the  Dyaiis  of  the  Hindus,  and 
his  name  had  actually  travelled  over  two  continents. 
Numerous  influences  were  interblended  in  the  confused 
multitude  of  Hellenic  gods.  There  is  a  still  deeper 
phase  than  either  the  Aryan  or  the  Semitic,  and  it  is 
to  be  found  in  the  debris  of  savage  ritual  which  un- 
doubtedly lies  embedded  in  Greek  religion.  Behind 
the  Vedas,  behind  the  Semitic  religions,  and  behind  the 
glittering  mythology  of  Greece  there  are  forbidding 
forms  of  ghost  and  animal  worship.  Every  Greek 
temple  had  its  origin  in  a  fetich  stone,  and  we  are 
surprised  to  discover  among  the  Bushmen  of  Australia 
myths  fundamentally  the  same  as  the  earliest  myths 
of  the  Greeks.^  There  is  the  clearest  evidence  that 
Zeus  was  once  worshipped  as  a  snake.  Indeed,  all  the 
Olympians  had  a  darker  side,  and  in  their  earliest 
forms  they  were  demons.  Behind  the  gorgeous  and 
gay  mythology  there  lurks  a  monstrous  and  appalling 
element.  Even  Apollo,  the  bright  god  of  the  sky,  was 
often  hostile  to  man.  His  name  means  "  Destroyer," 
and  he  sent  sudden  affliction  and  death.^  The  Iliad 
opens  with  the  sound  of  his  arrows  shot  against  the 
Greeks.  He  was  the  god  of  pestilence.  He  urged 
men  to  murder  even  their  kinsmen.  Sophocles  makes 
Ctldipus  say,  "Apollo  brought  all  my  woes  upon  me."  ^ 
He  was  the  terribly  earnest  god  ;  but  he  only  shared 
an  element  common  to  all  Greek  divinities.  There  was 
Demeter,  for  instance,  who,  although  she  was  the  placid 

1  "Custom  and  Myth,"  by  A.  Lang  (1893),  p.  53. 

2  As  usual,  Nietzsche  exaggerates  the  "brightness "of  Apollo.  "  Hier 
{i.e.  in  his  worship)  erinnert  nichts  an  Askese,  Geistigkeit  und  Pflicht  ; 
hier  redet  nur  ein  iippiges,  ja  triumphierendes  Dasein  zu  uns,  in  dem  alles 
Vorhandene  vergottlicht  ist,  gleichviel  ob  es  gut  oder  bose  ist"  {Die 
Geburt  der  Tragbdie,  Leipzig,  1872,  p.  n).  ^  ^d.  Tyr.,  1329. 


150  THE   NEMESIS   OF   NATIONS 

goddess  of  the  fields,  became  a  Fury  in  winter.  There 
was  Ate,  who  bewildered  the  mind  by  sudden  and  irra- 
tional impulse,  and  allowed  men  to  perish  of  their  own 
folly.  There  was  Dionysus,  who,  although  he  was  called 
"  The  Deliverer,"  was  called  also  "  The  Devourer."  He 
came  to  Greece  with  the  "  sunbeams  "  and  perfumes  of 
Asia  upon  him,  and  was  the  god  of  happy  vineyards  and 
the  red  vintage.  Nevertheless,  he  was  figured  as  a  lion 
for  fury,  and  the  legend  ran  that  when  a  king  of  Thebes 
scorned  his  worship  he  met,  at  the  god's  own  hands,  a 
dreadful  end. 

"  Oh,  whoso  walketh  not  in  dread 
Of  gods,  let  him  but  look  on  this  man  dead."  ^ 

It  was  in  connection  with  this  dark  aspect  of  the  gods 
that  human  sacrifice  continued  to  exist  in  Greece  even  as 
late  as  the  age  of  Herodotus  (484-424  B.C.).  We  dis- 
covered the  same  phase  in  India.  Not  in  legendary  but 
in  historical  Greece,  and  on  the  eve  of  the  battle  of  Salamis, 
Themistocles  sacrificed  three  Persian  youths  to  that  same 
Dionysus.  It  is  not  certain  how  long  human  oblation 
formed  part  of  the  official  ritual  of  the  State.  Perhaps  even 
in  the  fifth  century  the  yearly  human  scapegoats,  called 
the  "  Pharmakoi,"  were  led  out  of  Athens  to  be  killed  in 
expiation  of  the  offences  of  the  people.  And  here  again 
we  are  struck  by  the  contrast  of  the  humanity  of  Israel ; 
for  it  was  not  a  human  being,  it  was  an  actual  ^o«/,  which, 
in  obedience  to  the  strange  and  haunting  rite,  was  not 
killed,  but  only  led  out  to  wander  in  the  wilderness. 

9.  The  shallow  view  of  Greek  mythology  sees  in  it 
only  a  chronique  scandaleuse  or  a  fairy-tale.  But  we  shall 
not  understand  the  tragic  history  of  Greece  unless  we 
grasp  the  fact  that  her  destiny  seems  to  be  somehow 
foretold  in  her  religion.  The  fact  of  the  great  multi- 
^  The  BacchcE  of  Euripides,  translated  by  Gilbert  Murray. 


GREECE 


151 


tude  of  gods  is  a  proof  that  her  religious  imagination 
was  still  very  restless.  And  that  restlessness  reappears 
in  Greek  politics.  For  just  as  we  look  in  vain  for  any 
real  unity  in  Greek  religion,  so  we  look  in  vain  for  any 
real  unity  in  Greek  history.  Both  are  chaos.  Attempts 
have  been  made  to  discover  a  Hellenic  monotheism,  but 
they  have  not  been  successful.^  No  doubt  men  like 
Anaxagoras,  iEschylus,  and  Plato  reached  steadfast 
conceptions.  Indeed,  the  hymn  to  Zeus  in  Agamemnon 
is  profoundly  monotheistic.  And  the  fact  that  about 
438  B.C.  Phidias  was  commanded  by  the  Athenian  State 
to  erect  the  great  statue  of  Zeus  at  Olympia  is  a  sign 
that  a  kind  of  monotheism  was  officially  recognised.  But 
in  spite  of  the  centralisation  of  worship  at  such  temples  as 
Olympia  and  Delphi,  there  remained  a  multitude  of  local 
gods  claiming  allegiance,  and  bewildering  the  pious  Greek 
worshipper  much  as  the  devout  Catholic  is  bewildered  by 
his  host  of  saints.  It  is  precisely  this  crowded  condition 
of  Greek  mythology  which  repels  the  modern  world. 
Nevertheless,  we  shall  fail  to  understand  Greek  character 
unless  we  detect  behind  the  figures  of  fantastic  gods 
ideas  which  are  often  profoundly  ethical  and  human. 
For  instance,  although  Aphrodite,  goddess  of  passion, 
was  believed  to  rule  and  overrule  gods  and  men,  she  had 
no  power  over  Athena,  goddess  of  the  mind  and  patron 
of  the  loom  and  of  industry  ;  no  power  over  Artemis,  the 
huntress,  spirit  of  the  clean  air ;  and,  what  is  still  more 
significant.  Aphrodite  had  no  power  over  Hestia,  the 
goddess  and  guardian  of  the  hearth.  Ideas  like  these 
bring  Greek  religion  into  contact  with  modern  feeling, 
and  they  enable  us  to  see  the  genuine  earnestness  of  the 

^  See  especially  Nagelsbachs'  Die  Homerische  Theologie  (Niirnberg, 
1840),  p.  127,  where  Moira  or  Destiny  is  described  as  "  Ein  weiterer 
Versuch,  das  Bedurfniss  des  Menschengeistes  nach  monotheistischer 
Weltanschauung  zu  befriedigen."  See  also,  to  the  same  purpose, 
Preller's  Griechische  Myi/iolo^te  (Leipzig,  1854),  p.  73. 


152  THE   NEMESIS   OF  NATIONS 

early  Hellenic  mind.  That  mind  possessed  a  very  won- 
derful power  of  giving  plastic  form  and  vivid  personal 
meaning  to  the  things  that  are  most  intimate  with  man, 
as,  for  example,  in  its  creation  of  such  haunting  pre- 
sences as  Eros,Thanatos,  Hypnos,  Oneiros — Love,  Death, 
Sleep,  and  Dream.  For  mythology  is  the  sculpture  of 
the  imagination 

lo.  But  there  are  two  special  conceptions  which  the 
Greeks  embodied  in  Nemesis  and  in  the  Erinyes,  and  in 
these  they  made  a  permanent  contribution  to  the  deeper 
thought  of  the  world.  So  real  is  the  feeling  under- 
lying the  idea  of  Nemesis  that  the  actual  name  has 
become  a  part  of  modern  speech,  and  Nemesis  has 
remained  while  Apollo  and  Zeus  and  the  hosts  of  gods 
have  disappeared.  She  played  a  great  part  in  the  national 
life  of  the  Greeks,  and  was  and  still  is  the  busiest  of 
all  divinities.  She  stands  for  that  sudden  disaster 
and  eclipse  which  overtake  human  things.  Even  the 
Hebrews  appear  to  have  worshipped  her,^  and  one  of 
Jehovah's  attributes  was  Nemesis."  One  of  the  most 
striking  facts  in  Greek  history  is  that  after  the  battle 
of  Marathon  (490  b.c.)  Nemesis  was  more  earnestly 
worshipped.  For  the  Athenians  believed  that  they  had 
been  made  the  instruments  of  the  Persian  overthrow. 
At  Rhamnus  in  Attica  they  raised  a  great  shrine  to 
Nemesis,  and  only  the  most  precious  and  most  prized 
gifts  were  offered  to  her.  Pausanias  saw  her  temple, 
which  was  built  of  pure  white  marble,  and  it  stood  on 
a  lonely  road  looking  out  to  sea.  Within  it  was  a 
marble  statue  of  the  goddess  by  Phidias.  Nemesis  is 
the  decline  that  follows  growth,  the  defeat  that  comes 

*  "  So  I  lifted  up  mine  eyes  the  way  toward  the  north,  and  behold 
northward  at  the  gate  of  the  altar  this  Image  of  Jealousy  in  the  entry" 
(Ezek.  viii.  5).     Is  this  not  Nemesis  ? 

*  "  For  I  the  Lord  thy  God  am  a  jealous  God,  visiting  the  iniquity  of 
the  fathers  upon  the  children  "  (Exod.  xx.  5). 


GREECE  153 

after  victory,  the  ebb  after  the  flow — in  a  word,  that 
power  of  reaction,  disillusion,  and  eclipse  which  even  in 
his  triumph  haunts  the  spirit  of  man.  She  is  the  sense 
of  loss  and  of  warning.  Hence  it  is  really  important  to 
notice  that  as  Greek  national  experience  accumulated 
the  worship  of  Nemesis  grew  until  it  became  part  of 
the  religion  of  the  State.  In  Homer  and  in  Hesiod 
she  is  hardly  even  a  goddess.  She  is  simply  the  sense 
of  shame,  the  blush  of  purity.  Later  she  was  identified 
with  love  and  its  sorrow,  and  then  the  sculptors  gave 
her  wings. ^  But  throughout  all  her  changes  she  remained 
the  deep  and  sudden  power,  because  she  was  ocean-born, 
daughter  of  Okcanos.  At  last  she  was  elevated  to 
national  importance,  and  the  Greeks  vainly  thought  that 
she  was  keeping  a  special  vigil  over  Greece.  Her  great 
festival,  the  Nemeseia,  symbolised  the  solemnity  of  birth 
and  of  death,  the  giving  and  the  withdrawing  of  the  great 
gifts  of  life.     For  Nemesis  is  a  form  of  the  Eternal. 

II.  But  in  the  figures  of  the  Furies  or  Erinyes  the 
Greeks  embodied  in  even  a  more  striking  form  those  per- 
manent moral  forces  with  which  mankind  must  reckon. 
At  first  the  Erinyes,  as  the  avenging  goddesses,  were 
conceived  only  as  the  angry  ghosts  of  murdered  men. 
They  were  the  fiercest  expression  of  that  wild  cry,  "  A 
life  for  a  life  !  "  which,  as  wc  heard,  echoed  through 
the  law  of  Hindustan  and  of  Babylon.  The  name  of 
the  Erinyes  means  "strife."  They  were  the  hounds  of 
heaven  for  ever  on  the  track  of  blood. ^  Yet  their  office 
was  profoundly  human.  It  was  not  merely  the  mur- 
dered man  whom  they  avenged.  He  whose  humanity 
was  outraged,  the  beggar  turned  from  the  door,  the 
suppliant    driven    from    the    mercy-seat,    had    each    his 

^  Pausanias  tells  us  (i.  33,  6)  that  the  ancient  images  of  Nemesis  and 
the  marble  statue  by  Phidias  at  Rhamnus  were  wingless. 
2  Eumenides^  131,  132. 


154  THE   NEMESIS   OF   NATIONS 

Erinys.  Strangers  and  beggars  are  from  Zeus,^  says 
Homer,  and  an  inhospitable  act  never  went  unpunished. 
Later,  however,  the  function  of  the  Furies  became  more 
august  because  universal.  Both  they  and  Nemesis  are 
a  sign  of  the  nervousness  of  the  Greeks,  and  of  their 
sense  of  the  precarious  nature  of  all  human  things,  and 
of  the  errors  of  life.  In  one  aspect  the  Erinyes  are 
greater  even  than  the  gods,  and  are  independent  of  them, 
for  they  had  separated  themselves  from  the  Olympian 
parade  in  order  to  keep  a  lonely  watch  over  human 
wrong.  They  were  worshipped  in  silence  and  at  mid- 
night. Honey  was  offered  to  them  as  a  symbol  for 
appeasement,  and  as  a  sign  of  their  majesty  their 
images  were  clothed  in  Phoenician  purple.  For  they 
were  the  lex  talionis  of  Destiny,  or,  in  the  words  of 
ilLschylus,  they  were  the  recording  angels.^ 

12.  The  Eumenides  of  iEschylus  had  great  political 
importance  in  its  day,  and  it  will  serve  to  introduce  us 
to  the  social  condition  of  Athens  during  the  brief  period 
of  her  greatness.  Its  political  motives  have  been  vari- 
ously interpreted,  but  it  is  now  agreed  that  ^schylus 
was  not  opposed  to  the  reform  of  462  B.C.,  which 
deprived  the  Areopagus  or  council  of  elder  statesmen 
of  all  political  functions,  but  left  to  it  the  jurisdiction 
in  criminal  cases.  The  play  portrays  in  a  very  vivid 
manner  the  transition  from  an  age  of  wild  justice  to  an 
age  in  which  the  State  began  to  interfere  in  the  blood 
feud.  In  early  Greece  vengeance  was  placed  not  in  the 
hands  of  the  State  but  of  the  citizen.  It  was  considered 
to  be  not  merely  the  right  but  the  duty  of  the  nearest 
kinsman  of  the  murdered  man  to  avenge  the  murder  by 
a  new  crime.  One  murder  engendered  a  whole  series. 
Thus  Agamemnon,  in  obedience  to  the  infernal  prompt- 
ings of  a  deity  and  of  a  priest,  offered  up  his  daughter 

1  Iliad,  ix.  502,  *  "KaKwv  re  /xi/ij/ioi/er  o-e/ival"  (^Eumenides,  359). 


GREECE  155 

as  he  set  out  for  Troy.  Clytemnaestra,  his  wife,  nursed 
during  ten  years  her  horror  and  despair,  but  when  at 
last  Agamemnon  returned  from  Troy  she  slew  him  in 
his  own  palace.  Now,  however,  the  Erinys  of  Agamem- 
non began  to  goad  Orestes  to  avenge  his  father's  blood. 
Orestes,  like  another  Hamlet,  wavered  ;  but  at  length, 
urged  and  maddened  by  Apollo,  he  murdered  his  own 
mother  Clytemnaestra.  But  this  wave  of  crime  should 
not  yet  have  been  spent.  The  Erinys  of  Clytemnaestra 
was  now  awake  and  calling  for  vengeance  upon  Orestes, 
who  should  have  been  the  victim  of  a  new  murderer ; 
and  so  on  in  an  unending  series.  Here  in  a  few  pages 
iEschylus  brings  before  us  the  chaos  of  early  society  and 
its  struggle  towards  law.  That  struggle  was  long  past, 
and  the  Areopagus  was  already  a  venerable  criminal  court. 
As  if  to  prove  its  divine  right  of  jurisdiction,  iEschylus 
makes  Athena,  the  guardian  of  Athens,  its  founder. 
Orestes  is  summoned  before  it ;  and  although  the  ap- 
peasement of  the  Furies  at  the  acquittal  of  Orestes 
creates  a  certain  sense  of  anticlimax,  that  appeasement 
marked  a  new  era  in  the  civilisation  of  Greece  and  of 
the  world.  For  it  meant  that  tribunals,  however  im- 
perfect, had  at  last  been  created. 

13.  Very  early  in  Greek  history  we  become  aware  of 
that  sense  of  politics  and  that  genius  for  public  life  which 
are  essentially  European  instincts.  There  was  nothing 
like  it  in  any  contemporary  State  in  Asia.  In  the  sphere 
of  politics  as  well  as  of  art  the  Greeks  were  rapid  creators. 
And  just  as  Athenian  potters  had  a  horror  of  repeating 
the  same  pattern,  so  Athenian  citizens  were  never  weary 
of  new  political  experiments.  They  shared  in  an  intense 
form,  although  within  very  narrow  and  exclusive  limits, 
that  capacity  for  political  co-operation  which  still  dis- 
tinguishes Europe  from  Asia.  Borrowers  of  Oriental  art, 
they  were  not,  at  least  so  far  as  their  own  civic  system 


156  THE   NEMESIS   OF   NATIONS 

and  burgess  rights  were  concerned,  borrowers  of  Oriental 
politics.  Even  in  the  Homeric  age  the  public  assembly, 
whose  existence,  however,  we  noticed  likewise  in  Hindu- 
stan, had  been  long  established  and  was  filled  by  freemen. 
Powerful  kings  like  Agamemnon  summoned  and  con- 
sulted it.  In  a  very  remarkable  passage  in  the  Iliad 
modern  democratic  ideas  are  foreshadowed  and  are  ex- 
pressed almost  in  modern  language.  Thus  Diomedes 
rises  during  a  debate  and  states  that  on  a  matter  of 
policy  he  is  about  to  contradict  the  king  "where  it  is 
right  to  do  so,  even  in  the  assembly."  ^  And  although  it 
is  a  long  way  from  the  Homeric  Agora  to  the  Athenian 
Ecclesia,  the  one  was  the  origin  of  the  other.  Public 
opinion,  indeed,  was  first  created  in  Greece.  Babylon 
doubtless  possessed  an  elaborate  legal  system.  She  had 
judges  and  even  juries.  But  her  juries  were  composed 
only  of  the  city  elders,  who  were  appointed  by  the 
central  authority.  On  the  other  hand,  in  Athens,  during 
the  period  of  her  full  democratic  development,  judges 
and  juries  were  chosen  not  merely  from  the  people  but 
by  the  people,  and  by  lot.  Whereas,  too,  Asiatic  decen- 
tralisation of  government  took  the  form  of  satrapies, 
which  were  only  miniature  tyrannies,  in  Greece  decentrali- 
sation early  assumed  the  form  of  self-governing  cities 
and  even  of  self-governing  boroughs  and  parishes.  Local 
government,  in  fact,  is  the  keynote  of  Greek  political 
history.  For  although  in  Greece  political  ideals  suffered 
numerous  and  great  oscillations,  and  although  tyrannies 
were  recurrent,  civic  freedom  was  the  goal  of  Greek 
States.  There  is  a  velocity  in  almost  everything  Hellenic, 
and  many  of  the  cities  overthrew  their  despots  within  a 
very  short   time.     Athens   had   delivered   herself  about 

^   "  'Arpf'iSij,  crot  TTpwra  ixaxf)<rofiai  acfipadfovri, 
y  defjiis  fO-Ti,  ava^,  ayopfj." 

— Iliad,  ix.  32,  33. 


GREECE  157 

510   B.C.     Even    in    Sparta,   the    most    reactionary   and 
bigoted  of  them  all,  the  evils  of  a  single  despotism  were 
neutralised  by  the  creation  of  a  dual  monarchy — not  in 
the  sense  that  one  king  wore  two  crowns,  but  that  two 
kings  reigned  over  one  people.     In  attempting,  however, 
to  understand   the   contribution  which   Greece  made  to 
the   world's    happiness    and    misery,   it    is    only   Athens 
among    Greek   states   which   wc   shall   choose   to   study, 
because   it   was   in   Athenian   life   and   in   the  Athenian 
conception  of  liberty  that  the  strength  and  the  weakness 
of   Hellenic    civilisation   are    best    seen.      In    the    rapid 
kaleidoscope  of  Greek   history,  the  single   prism  which 
was   Athens   suffices   to   show   the   manifold    lio-hts   and 
colours  of  the  Hellenic  ideal.     Yet  it  is  not  the  Athens 
of  the  despots  that  we  shall  select,  not  only  because  we 
know  too  little  about  her,  but  that  because  even  if  we 
knew  more  we  should  discover  nothing  really  new  con- 
cerning  the  relations   between   the  oppressed   and   their 
oppressors.     The  fact  which  startles  us  is  not  that  men 
were  miserable  under  a  despot  but  under  a  democracy. 
For  although   Athens  did    reach    the   most    democratic 
form  of  government  which  the  world  has  seen,  the  basis 
of  her  social  system  was  still  slavery.     Hence  we  dis- 
cover a  new  despotism,  and  the  worst  of  all  because  it 
was  collective.     In  discussing  Athenian  politics  it  is  diffi- 
cult to  avoid  the  appearance  of  self-contradiction.     But 
the    contradiction    lies    originally    in    the    system    itself. 
European   in  its  theory  of  political   rights,  it  was   still 
Asiatic   in   its  theory  of  servile  labour.     The  Athenian 
State  in  its  democratic  form  was  no  doubt  the  result  of 
the  co-operation  of  its  citizens  in  a  great  political  task, 
but  it  was  a  co-operation  directed  against  those  who  were 
excluded   from  the   privileges  of  citizenship.     In  other 
words,  the  Athenian  citizens  were  greatly  outnumbered 
by   their   slaves.     Moreover,  co-operation   between    city 


158  THE   NEMESIS   OF   NATIONS 

and  city  failed  in  the  end,  and  was  never  long  vital. 
The  paradox  of  Greek,  and  especially  of  Athenian,  poli- 
tics is  this  :  wc  are  brought  face  to  face  with  a  democracy 
which,  although  the  most  vivid  and  intelligent  in  the 
world's  history,  was  in  reality  a  failure.  It  changed  the 
tyranny  of  a  single  will  into  the  tyranny  of  a  multitude. 
A  people  whose  political  characteristics  were  an  impa- 
tience of  restraint  and  a  horror  of  despots  developed  a 
collective,  impersonal,  and  anonymous  despotism  which 
at  length  caused  their  own  ruin. 

14.  There  is  evidence  that  the  primitive  Greeks,  like 
all  other  Aryan  communities,  began  their  career  not 
merely  as  clans,  but  as  clans  whose  members  shared 
common  property.  At  least,  the  lanJ  belonged  not  to 
individuals  but  to  groups  of  kinsmen,  and  could  not  be 
alienated.  We  have  no  means  of  knowing  how  early 
this  communism  was  broken  up,  and  at  what  date  private 
property  was  established.  But  traces  of  the  old  system 
lingered  in  historical  Greece.  For  the  land  was  often 
described  as  belonging  to  ideal  personages,  to  the  gods 
and  heroes  as  well  as  to  tribes  and  brotherhoods.  And 
even  long  after  individual  ownership  had  been  established, 
the  State  continued  to  lay  claim  to  fruit-trees,  for  instance, 
although  they  were  growing  in  private  gardens.  At  first 
allotments  appear  to  have  been  held  temporarily  and  on 
a  precarious  tenure,  since  at  any  moment  the  community 
might  reassert  its  claim.  In  Greece,  as  in  Rome,  the 
gradual  encroachment  on  the  ager  publicus  was  the  result 
of  long  leases  which  had  probably  been  assigned  to  certain 
families  in  return  for  distinguished  services.  Possession 
and  the  lapse  of  time  were  liable  to  render  the  usufruct 
perpetual,  and  hence  the  State's  acquiescence  was  secured. 
This  appears  to  be  proved  by  the  fact  that  in  later  times, 
as  soon  as  the  chief  magistrate  was  elected,  his  first  duty 
was  to  declare   that   he  guaranteed  to  all  owners  their 


GREECE  159 

proprietary  rights.  And  since  the  chief  magistrate  was, 
during  a  long  period,  invariably  chosen  from  the  ranks 
of  the  aristocracy,  the  presumption  is  that  the  ruling 
families  had  created  the  custom  in  their  own  interests. 
In  any  case,  the  agrarian  struggles  of  the  seventh  and 
the  sixth  centuries  were  carried  on  between  a  minority 
who  attempted  to  maintain  prescriptive  territorial  rights, 
and  a  majority  who  clamoured  for  a  redistribution  of  the 
land.  The  social  history  of  all  European  communities 
appears  to  have  passed  through  three  great  phases  :  ( i ) 
the  break-up  of  communism  in  land  within  communities 
which  had  grown  too  large  for  such  a  system  to  be  any 
longer  practicable;  (2)  the  consequent  rise  of  property 
and  of  an  intense  individualism  ;  and  (3)  the  inevitable 
war  of  rights.  The  early  social  and  political  condition 
of  Attica  is  in  its  details  unknown  to  us,  but  it  seems 
evident  that  the  growth  of  individualism  was  simultaneous 
with  the  centralising  movement  which  gradually  drew 
smaller  communities  within  the  orbit  of  the  single  power- 
ful city,  which  was  Athens.  In  that  evolution  religion 
had  played  an  important  part,  for  it  had  helped  to  re- 
concile political  divergences  in  the  common  worship  of 
Poseidon  and  Athena  on  the  Athenian  Acropolis.  It  has 
been  supposed  that  there  was  some  connection  between 
the  union  of  Attica  and  the  fall  of  the  monarchy,  and 
that  both  events  took  place  before  the  ninth  century. 
We  hear  that  a  certain  Codrus  was  the  last  king,  and 
that  he  had  laid  down  his  life  for  his  country.  But  it  is 
very  remarkable  that  the  first  check  upon  the  royal 
authority  took  the  form  of  the  creation  of  a  military 
commander-in-chief,  or  polemarch^  who  was  elected  by  the 
nobles.  Ought  we  not,  in  spite  of  the  flattering  legends 
about  Codrus,  to  see  in  this  fact  a  sign  that  some  king 
had  been  convicted  of  military  incapacity  }  If  a  hereditary 
ruler  might  thus  become  a  danger  to  the  State  in  time  of 


i6o  THE   NEMESIS  OF  NATIONS 

war,  he   might    also    by  administrative    incapacity   be   a 
danger  in  time  of  peace.     In  any  case,  the  abolition  of 
the  kingship  appears  to  have  been  the  work  of  a  power- 
ful   aristocracy,    who    thereupon    elected    an    archon    or 
regent  from  among  themselves.     At  first  he  was  regent 
for  life,  then  for  ten  years,  and  at  last  only  for  one  year. 
Thus,  by  successive  descending  steps,  the  Athenian  con- 
stitution began  to  approach  its  democratic  basis.     And 
yet,    although    no    people    was    so  jealous    of   political 
power,    the    name    of  king   was    never    abolished.      An 
archon    annually    chosen     was    still     called     king,    and 
although    his   duties   were   chiefly   religious,    the    people 
saw  in   his   person   the  continuity  of  the   ancient  State. 
Moreover,    the    aristocracy   long    remained    omnipotent, 
because  its  members  filled  the  ofiice  of  the  chief  magis- 
trates.    But  an  aristocracy  of  wealth  was  gradually  being 
created.     The  political  history  of  Athens  is  the  history 
of  a  people  rapidly  outgrowing  their  early  political  and 
economic  system.     The  wine  and  the  oil  and  the  potter's 
clay  of  Attica  did  not  long  suffice  as  the  basis  of  revenue, 
and  Athens  soon  transformed  herself  into  an  industrial 
State.      Yet,   even  in   the  more   primitive  period,  when 
the  people  were  attempting  to  eke  out  an  existence  by 
tilling  a   poor  soil  or  tending  cattle  upon  it,  a  division 
of  labour  had  already  been  created.     There  are  reasons 
for  believing  that  that  division  was  hereditary  and  fixed. 
Ancient  writers   like    Herodotus,   Plato,   Plutarch,    and 
Strabo  expressly  state  that  caste  existed  in  Greece,  and 
the  doubts  of  modern  historians  appear  to  be  unjustified.^ 
We   hear   of  four  "  tribes "   named  Teleontes   or  Gelc- 
ontes,     Hopletes,    ^gicoreis,    and    Argadeis,    and     the 
most   satisfactory   explanation   of  these   words   is  to  be 
found     in     their    translations,     which    are    respectively 

^  "  Blosse  Hypothesen,"  says  Busolt,  regarding  the  theory  according 
to  which  castes  existed  in  early  Greece  {Geschichte,  i.  392). 


GREECE  i6i 

priests,  warriors,  herdsmen,  and  artisans.  We  are  thus 
brought  into  contact  with  a  system  similar  to  that  which 
we  found  in  the  Vedic  age.  There  is  no  reason  to 
show  why  it  should  not  have  arisen  in  Greece.  On  the 
contrary,  it  is  well  known  that  hereditary  priesthoods 
were  common.  Besides,  Herodotus  informs  us  that 
caste  existed  in  Sparta,  and  that  a  man  could  become 
a  flute-player  or  a  cook  or  a  herald  only  if  his  father 
had  followed  the  same  profession.^  It  seems,  therefore, 
to  be  only  a  waste  of  time  to  attempt  to  explain  away 
a  system  traces  of  whose  influence  we  rediscover  in  the 
social  hierarchies  of  the  later  Athenian  community. 
Thus  another  classification  has  come  down  to  us,  com- 
prising the  Eupatridai  or  nobles,  the  Georgoi  or  farmers, 
and  the  Demiurgoi  or  workmen.  As  in  Hindustan,  the 
nobles  were  originally  the  warriors,  and  their  later 
privileges  were  the  reward  of  their  valour.  The  Georgoi 
and  Demiurgoi  may  be  taken  as  the  representatives  of 
the  earlier  herdsmen  and  handicraftsmen.  That  in  this 
classification  the  priests  are  not  mentioned  may  be 
taken  as  another  proof  of  the  fact  that  the  Greeks, 
like  the  Romans,  but  unlike  the  Aryans  of  India,  early 
disentangled  priestly  from  political  functions.  The 
Eupatrids  were  the  ruling  class,  but  the  two  others 
took  part  in  the  assembly.  Beneath  all  three  were  a 
kind  of  peasants  or  Hektemoroi,  who,  although  free- 
men, had  no  political  ^rights.  They  were  attached  to 
the  soil,  and  were  permitted  to  retain  one-sixth  of  its 
produce.  Hence  their  name.  But  there  was  still 
another  classification  of  the  people  according  to  the 
amount  of  their  property.  It  represents  another  stage 
in  the  transformation  of  a  primitive  State  founded  upon 
the  clan  system  into  a  State  founded  upon  an  economic 
basis.      Thus   the  upper  Athenian  class  in   the   seventh 

1  VI.  60. 

L 


1 62  THE   NEMESIS   OF   NATIONS 

century  consisted  of  those  whose  income  reached  the 
value  of  five  hundred  bushels  of  corn ;  the  second  class 
was  made  up  of  those  whose  incomes  were  less  than 
five  hundred  but  more  than  two  hundred  ;  and  the  third 
was  formed  by  those  whose  incomes  were  not  less  than 
two  hundred  bushels.  Beneath  all  those  classes,  again, 
were  the  Thetes^  who  had  either  a  small  or  no  regular 
income,  and  their  poverty  excluded  them  from  a  share 
in  the  government.  The  later  Athenian  constitution 
was  the  result  of  the  interaction  of  these  various  political 
forces,  which  indeed  arrived  very  early  at  a  deadlock. 
While  an  aristocracy  based  on  birth  had  full  control 
of  the  affairs  of  State,  the  aristocracy  of  money  were 
already  demanding  a  share  of  privileges.  The  introduc- 
tion of  coinage  in  place  of  the  old  system  of  barter 
revolutionised  industry,  and  created  an  economic  crisis 
which  ruined  the  small  dealers.  War  and  sedition 
added  to  the  confusion,  and  the  want  of  a  code  of  law, 
without  which  obligations  and  rights  remained  uncertain, 
placed  the  poor  at  the  mercy  of  the  rich.  It  was  in 
these  circumstances  that  about  621  B.C.  Dracon  was 
invited  to  draw  up  a  code  of  civil  and  criminal  law. 
But  his  achievement  was  hardly  a  reform.  It  only  made 
the  existing  system  articulate,  and  revealed  its  failure. 

15.  A  social  system  probably  in  some  of  its  phases 
as  rigid  and  as  sterile  as  the  Brahmanism  of  Hindustan 
had  produced  in  Attica  the  same  results.  The  land  was 
overwhelmed  by  debt,  and  a  mortgage  pillar  stood  upon 
every  freehold.  Moreover,  by  the  law  of  Dracon,  every 
debtor  was  the  slave  of  his  creditor  until  the  debt  was 
paid.  Many  freemen  had  thus  lost  their  liberty,  and  the 
entire  community  was  in  danger  of  becoming  the  prey 
of  a  despot.  For  wealth  was  the  only  guarantee  of  liberty 
and  the  source  of  political  power.  It  was  precisely  in 
such  a  condition  of  things  that  the  tyrant's  best  chance 


GREECE  163 

lay.  Thus  the  history  of  Athens  opens  with  a  picture 
of  economic  misery  which  is  in  the  strangest  contrast 
with  the  splendour  which  she  afterwards  attained.  Aris- 
totle informs  us  that  before  Solon's  day  the  State  was 
governed  by  a  few  powerful  families,  and  that  the  poorer 
class  were  "  in  absolute  slavery  to  the  rich."  ^  We  shall 
notice  later  the  curious  contradiction  in  the  writings  of 
some  Greek  philosophers,  who,  although  they  condemned 
the  enslavement  of  freemen,  regarded  with  indifference 
the  forced  labour  of  those  whom  they  declared  were  not 
*'  by  nature  "  free.  Meantime,  we  are  to  understand  that 
Aristotle  is  drawing  a  picture  of  the  gradual  subjection 
of  Attic  freemen.  He  lays  his  finger  upon  that  cause 
of  social  trouble  which  is  still  active  in  modern  States, 
for  he  ascribes  the  misery  of  the  people  to  the  fact  that 
"  the  whole  land  was  in  the  hands  of  a  few  persons."  ^ 
He  then  gives  a  vivid  description  of  the  eviction  and 
the  enslavement  of  tenants  unable  to  pay  their  rents. 
Their  bodies  were  mortgaged  for  the  liquidation  of  debt, 
and  sometimes  the  tenant  was  compelled  to  sell  not 
merely  himself  but  his  wife  and  children  as  slaves  to  his 
landlord.  It  was  amidst  this  scene  of  universal  squalor 
that  Solon,  a  member  of  the  aristocracy,  appeared  as  "  the 
champion  of  the  people."^  His  great  scheme  of  poor 
relief  was  called  a  Seisactheia,  a  sufficiently  striking  word 
because  it  means  "  the  shaking  off  of  burdens."  His 
immediate  task  was  to  rescue  the  person  of  the  debtor. 
It  was  now  declared  to  be  illegal  to  enslave  a  freeman 
for  the  non-payment  of  debt.  But  the  reformer  seems 
to  have  specially  congratulated  himself  upon  the  fact 
that  he  had  "  liberated  the  land  "  as  well,  since  he  had 
overthrown  the  mortgage  pillars  which,  standing  on  every 


^  "Athenian  Constitution,"  2 
2  << 


7]  Si  waaa  "yri  bC  dXiyicv  9jv  "  (ibid.,  2). 
3  ^^oiros  di  (i.e.  Solon)  t^wtoj  eyiyero  toO  difjfiov  TrpodTaTrji"  (ibid.,  2). 


164  THE   NEMESIS   OF   NATIONS 

small  holding,  declared  the  name  of  the  lender  and  the 
amount  of  the  loan.  Not  content  with  having  carried 
a  law  which  cancelled  debt,  he  passed  another  which 
altered  the  currency.  The  mina,  which  used  to  contain 
seventy-three  drachmas,  was  now  declared  to  be  equivalent 
to  one  hundred.  This  last  measure  had  political  and 
commercial  as  well  as  remedial  motives  behind  it,  because 
by  the  adoption  of  the  Ionic  currency  Athenian  trade 
was  stimulated  "and  new  markets  were  opened  up.  Let 
us  note,  however,  that  Solon's  great  relief  law  was  put 
in  motion  only  on  behalf  of  those  freemen  who  had 
fallen  into  slavery  because  of  their  debts.  Those  who 
were  "slaves  by  nature,"  as  Aristotle  would  say,  had  no 
share  in  the  brief  Millennium.  No  doubt  in  one  of  his 
poems  Solon  praises  himself  because  he  had  delivered 
those  who  "  had  crouched  and  trembled  before  their 
masters."  But  there  is  no  sign  that  he  had  interfered 
with  the  slave  traffic,  which  had  already  established  itself 
as  an  organic  element  in  the  Athenian  constitution.  For 
instance,  in  his  penalty  for  outrage  only  free  women,  not 
slave  women,  are  mentioned.  Thus,  if  the  sufferings  of 
the  freemen  had  been  great,  we  are  to  infer  that  those 
of  the  slaves  must  have  been  far  greater.  And,  after 
all,  Solon  appears  only  to  have  transformed  an  old  tribal 
State,  in  which  the  clan  system  was  the  basis,  into  a  more 
flexible  community.  But  the  old  tribes  were  retained, 
and  indeed  their  retention  prevented  the  new  scheme 
from  being  a  thorough  reform.  Such  as  it  was,  however, 
it  made  Solon  the  founder  of  the  democracy.  He  re- 
stricted the  amount  of  land  which  could  be  held  by  a 
single  person.  He  not  only  gave  the  poor  freemen  a 
vote  in  the  assembly,  but  he  transferred  the  adminis- 
tration of  justice  to  the  people.  In  the  form  of  the 
Heliasa,  the  citizens,  without  respect  to  their  wealth, 
were  chosen  by  lot  to  serve  on  the  juries,  and  even  the 


GREECE  165 

poorest  among  them  could  impeach  a  magistrate.  By 
the  creation  of  an  elected  council  of  four  hundred,  which 
possessed  the  power  of  initiating  legislation,  the  privileges 
of  the  Areopagus  were  curtailed.  And  the  Areopagus 
itself  was  brought  nearer  the  people  by  the  fact  that 
retiring  magistrates  entered  it  as  permanent  members. 

16.  The  Solonian  system  was  thus  republican,  but 
even  within  the  life  of  its  author  it  broke  down  in  the 
war  of  factions  and  made  way  for  a  new  "  tyranny." 
The  Athenians  had  first  neutralised  the  royal  prerogative 
by  the  appointment  of  a  military  commander,  but  now  a 
successful  polemarch  or  general,  Pisistratus,  like  some 
diminutive  Napoleon,  seized  the  vacant  throne.  This 
happened  in  561  B.C.  Twice  banished,  but  twice  rein- 
stated, Pisistratus  succeeded  in  holding  the  '*  tyranny  " 
for  thirty-three  years,  and  he  bequeathed  it  to  his  sons. 
As  we  have  seen,  there  is  evidence  that  during  those 
years  Athens  enjoyed  prosperity,  for  Pisistratus  encour- 
aged industry  and  the  arts.  An  aqueduct  whose  ruins 
have  been  discovered  is  believed  to  have  been  his  work, 
and  he  built  great  temples.  But  although  Aristotle 
gives  a  very  favourable  account  of  him,  it  is  clear  that 
Attica  still  suffered  from  economic  stagnation.  Aristotle 
narrates  an  incident  which  he  apparently  considered  to 
be  typical  of  the  state  of  things.  He  says  that  Pisis- 
tratus had  gone  one  day  into  the  country,  and  that 
he  passed  a  labourer  who  was  digging  a  stony  piece  of 
ground.  Pisistratus  asked  the  man  what  sort  of  living 
he  procured  from  such  soil.  "  A  harvest  of  aches  and 
pains,"  replied  the  labourer,  "  and  even  out  of  them 
Pisistratus  must  get  his  tithe."  ^  It  is  right  to  add  that 
the  benevolent  despot  granted  the  man  exemption  from 
the  taxes ;  but  the  distress  was  widespread,  and  a  revolu- 
tion was  in  the  air. 

*  "Athenian  Constitution,"  16. 


1 66  THE   NEMESIS   OF   NATIONS 

17,  Since  the  seizure  of  the  supreme  power  by  Pisis- 
tratus,  the  era  of  liberty  had  been  only  adjourned.      In 
the  reign  of  his  son  Hippias  (528-510  B.C.)  the  move- 
ment   became    at    last    irresistible.      But    we    should    be 
wrong  if  we  supposed   that  either  Athenian  or  Roman 
liberty    was    the    result    of    a    spontaneous    and    united 
demand    of   the   democracy.     On   the  contrary,  in  both 
cases  it  was  largely  the  result  of  the  accidents  of  party 
strife.      It  was   wrung   out   of  the   rivalries  of  factions 
which    sought    the    popular    vote.      Personal    quarrels, 
scandals,   and    prolonged    hereditary   hate   between   great 
families  culminated   about   510  B.C.  in  the  overthrow  of 
the    Pisistratid    dynasty.      A    genuine    party    of   reform 
entered    the    scene,   and    it    was    led    by    Cleisthenes,    a 
member  of  the  house  of  the  Alcmasonids.     This  great 
man  took,  up,  about  508  B.C.,  the  legislative  task  where 
Solon  had  laid  it  down,  and  he  purged  the  Solonian  system 
of  its  obsolete  elements.      Politically  and  socially  Athens 
was  in  chaos.     And  the  struggle  of  the  classes  was  made 
fiercer  by  the  presence  of  many  foreign  residents.      Pisis- 
tratus,  by  his  encouragement  of  trade,  had  attracted  many 
merchants  to  Athens,  but  these  men  were  not  citizens. 
We    shall    thus   probably   not  be   wrong   if  we  suppose 
that  Cleisthenes  found  at  Athens  a  state  of  things  not 
different  from  what  existed  at  Johannesburg  just  before 
the  Boer  war.     The  franchise  was  in  the  hands  only  of 
the  burghers,  who  belonged   to  the  old  exclusive  clans. 
A  new  and  industrious  population,  partly  composed  of 
foreign  traders,  had  now  grown  up  within  the  city,  and 
were    contributing   the   main   share    of  its  wealth.      But 
they  had  no   political  rights.     Cleisthenes  became  their 
spokesman,   and   in   spite   of   much   opposition    actually 
succeeded  in  abolishing  an  antiquated  system.      In  place 
of  the   four  tribes  he  created  ten  political   divisions  of 
the  people,  and  he  allowed  many  foreigners  to  become 


GREECE!  167 

naturalised.  Every  parish  began  to  manage  its  own 
affairs.  A  committee  of  the  nation,  numbering  500 
members,  were  elected  by  the  votes  of  the  ten  political 
divisions,  and  were  accountable  to  the  public  assembly 
for  their  conduct  of  public  business.  This  council  has 
been  described  as  a  proper  representative  body,  and  as 
almost  equivalent  to  a  modern  parliament.  Public  busi- 
ness was  conducted  by  committees  of  fifty  acting  in 
rotation  throughout  the  political  year,  which  was  divided 
for  the  purpose  into  ten  parts.  Although  the  poorest 
class  of  freemen  appear  still  to  have  been  excluded  from 
the  highest  offices,  the  republican  basis  of  the  constitution 
had  been  broadened.  Public  appointments  were  made 
by  lot,  but  this  system  had  already  existed  in  the  time 
of  Dracon.^  To  a  modern  reader  the  custom  seems  to 
be  almost  insane,  but  we  must  remember  that  it  originated 
in  the  superstition  that  in  the  lot  the  decree  of  the  gods 
became  known.  And  it  has  been  observed  that,  granted 
the  democratic  principles  of  a  state  like  Athens  whose 
citizens  were  not  numerous,  appointment  by  lot  meant 
little  more  than  office  by  rotation.  Nevertheless,  the 
system  contained  the  causes  of  future  ruin.  Uncon- 
sciously it  was  condemned  by  the  Athenians  themselves. 
As  if  to  prove  that  caution  was  not  absent  from  their 
character,  it  was  agreed  that  selection  by  lot  was  not  to 
be  applied  in  the  case  of  military  appointments.  It  was 
recognised  that  military  genius  could  not  be  discovered 
by  plunging  for  it  among  the  mob.  And  it  was  well 
that  the  Athenian  democracy  at  the  outset  of  its  career 
had  made  this  provision,  because  when  it  was  barely 
twenty  years  old  it  was  called  upon  to  meet  the  greatest 
trial  which  had  as  yet  fallen  upon  Greece. 

1 8.  We  are  not  immediately  interested  in  the  military 
affairs  of  Athens,  but  it  is  necessary  to  notice  the  effect 

^  Aristoteles  und  Athen,  i.  p.  89. 


1 68  THE   NEMESIS   OF   NATIONS 

of  the  Persian  wars  upon  her  inner  history.  For  it 
was  owing  to  external  menace  that  the  next  and  most 
momentous  stage  in  the  development  of  her  democracy 
was  due.  There  is  probably  nothing  more  wonderful 
in  the  biography  of  nations  than  the  fact  that  a  people 
who,  twenty  years  earlier,  had  been  disunited  and  im- 
potent in  the  hands  of  an  incapable  ruler,  were  now 
united  and  strong  in  face  of  the  invaders.  Twenty  years 
of  national  life  had  created  a  national  spirit.  It  was 
mainly  upon  Athens  that  the  fury  of  Darius  was  to 
break.  We  mentioned  that  Greeks  had  early  crossed 
the  sea  to  become  colonists  in  Asia  Minor,  and  to  serve 
as  a  link  between  both  sides  of  the  JEgG.a.n.  We  now 
see  that  they  were  a  dangerous  link.  For  it  was  because 
Athens  had  recognised  them  as  her  kinsmen  and  had  sent 
them  twenty  ships  in  their  revolt  against  Persia  (498  B.C.) 
that  her  own  punishment  was  being  made  ready.  The 
Persians,  who  had  destroyed  Babylon  and  Egypt,  and  had 
pushed  their  way  into  Asia  Minor  and  even  across  the 
Bosphorus  into  Scythia  and  Thrace,  found  in  Athens 
the  single  barrier  which  shut  them  out  from  Europe. 
"  Who  are  the  Athenians  .?  "  asked  Darius.  And  when 
he  was  told  that  they  were  a  maritime  people  who  had 
helped  to  kindle  the  flame  of  freedom  among  the  Asiatic 
Greeks,  he  took  his  bow  and  shot  an  arrow  into  the  sky, 
exclaiming,  "  Grant  me,  God,  to  revenge  myself  against 
the  Athenians."  And  his  servant  was  commanded  to 
say  to  him  frequently,  and  day  after  day,  "  Remember 
the  Athenians ! " 

19.  The  great  and  dangerous  task  which  lay  before 
Athens  may  be  measured  by  the  fact  that  at  the  moment 
when  all  Asia  was  being  put  in  motion  against  her,  and 
when  all  Greece  should  have  been  united,  most  of  the 
Greek  States  were  ready  to  submit  to  the  invader,  and 
some  of  the  Greek  leaders  actually  became  his  pilots  and 


GREECE  169 

guides.  When  the  day  of  crisis  came  Athens  was  left  in 
the  lurch  even  by  Sparta,  and  only  about  one  thousand 
other  Greeks  rallied  to  her  at  Marathon.  Happily, 
however,  the  democracy  had  discovered  a  general  in 
Miltiades,  whose  victory  against  the  Persians  at  that 
battle  sent  a  great  thrill  through  Greece.  As  we  saw, 
it  was  after  that  victory  that  the  Temple  of  Nemesis  was 
built  within  an  hour's  journey  of  the  battlefield.  Long 
afterwards  the  Marathonian  plain  was  considered  to  be 
still  holy  ground,  not  only  because  heroes  were  buried  in 
it,  but  because  it  was  believed  that  their  restless  ghosts 
assembled  every  night  for  spectral  combat,  and  even  the 
neighing  of  the  war-horses  might  be  heard.  "To  go  on 
purpose  to  see  the  sight,"  says  Pausanias,  "  never  brought 
good  to  any  man,  but  with  him  who  unwittingly  lights 
upon  it  the  spirits  are  not  angry."  ^  Such  a  legend  shows 
how  great  was  the  impression  which  the  battle  had  made 
on  the  imagination  of  Greece.  But  Marathon  was  only 
the  first  of  a  series  of  encounters  which  Athens  was  called 
upon  to  face  during  the  next  fifteen  years.  For  Darius 
bequeathed  his  fury  to  his  son  Xerxes,  who  set  out  to 
conquer  Greece  in  481  B.C.  But  he  learned  at  Ther- 
mopylae, by  the  charge  of  the  three  hundred  led  by 
Leonidas,  that  on  land  these  younger  Aryans  had  greater  480  b.c, 
courage  than  the  elder ;  and  he  learned  at  Salamis  that 
on  the  sea  their  superiority  was  far  past  questioning.  It 
is  right  to  remember  that  this  collision  between  Persians 
and  Greeks  is  one  of  the  most  striking  events  in  human 
history,  not  merely  because  of  its  results,  but  because  it 
was  a  collision  between  two  peoples  whose  ancestors  had 
once  been  in  the  closest  contact.  However  we  may 
explain  the  fact,  a  Greek,  if  he  listened  carefully,  could 
understand  many  Persian  words  besides  those  for  father, 
mother,   grandson,    ploughing,    spinning,    and    weaving. 

'  I-  32,  3- 


lyo  THE   NEMESIS   OF   NATIONS 

The  Greek  and  Persian  names  for  most  of  the  weapons 
which  were  being  used  in  the  combat,  such  as  spear,  axe, 
javelin,  bow  and  arrow,  were  fundamentally  the  same. 
Who  can  explain  why  half  a  continent  now  separated 
men  who,  if  they  were  not  descendants  from  the  same 
primeval  kindred,  were  certainly  descendants  of  peoples 
who  had  once  possessed  a  common  language?  Greeks 
and  Persians  possessed  not  only  fragments  of  a  common 
language,  but  of  a  common  religion  and  of  common 
institutions.  Here  we  seem  to  catch  a  glimpse  of  the 
lost  worlds  which  lie  behind  history,  and  we  seem  to  see 
some  great  blood  feud  raging  in  prehistoric  times  and 
breaking  races  into  fragments  and  scattering  them  between 
the  continents.  And  what  Erinys  of  history  sleeping 
during  unnumbered  ages  had  suddenly  awaked  in  order 
to  bring  these  distant  kinsmen  into  battle.?  The  victory, 
which  was  a  just  one,  was  to  remain  with  the  European 
branch.  For  although  Attica  was  beleaguered  by  sea 
and  land,  Athens  sacked,  and  the  tyrant  of  the  whole 
East  lodged  on  the  Acropolis,  the  Athenians  had  again 
discovered  their  man  in  Themistocles,  whose  victory  at 
Salamis  destroyed  the  Persian  navy.  And  here  again  it 
may  be  useful  to  note,  for  the  comprehension  of  Greek 
character,  that  curious  power  of  faith  which,  often  irre- 
spective of  the  moral  quality  of  its  object,  makes  men 
strong.  The  Athenians  perhaps  awaited  the  battle  in  the 
full  belief  that  their  sea  god,  Poseidon,  was  about  to 
fight  for  them.  For  while  the  Persian  fleet  was  moving 
towards  the  coasts  of  Attica  the  Greek  sailors  prayed  to 
the  winds  to  destroy  it.  And  we  are  told  that  a  great 
storm  did  actually  blow  from  the  Hellespont,  and  shat- 
tered half  the  ships  of  Xerxes.  A  vast  treasure  was  sunk 
in  the  sea,  and  during  many  days  the  surf  cast  up  on  the 
eastern  shores  of  Greece  Persian  gold  and  silver  drinking- 
cups,   costly   accoutrements,   and    boxes    filled   with   the 


GREECE  171 

luxury  of  the  East.  The  streets  of  Susa  were  not  yet 
free  from  the  reek  of  the  incense  which  had  gone  up  in 
honour  of  the  massacre  at  Thermopylae  and  of  Xerxes' 
victories  in  Attica.  But  now  Persian  horsemen,  riding, 
as  Herodotus  says,  never  so  fast,  arrived  in  Asia  with 
the  news  of  what  Athens  had  done. 

20.  Such  great  victories  made  the  democracy  con- 
scious of  its  strength,  and  gave  it,  besides,  the  headship 
of  all  Greece.  In  the  wild  crisis  now  past,  it  was  only 
Athens  among  Greek  States  that  had  been  united,  for 
her  rank  and  her  rabble  had  shared  the  common  danger. 
iEschylus  had  fought  at  Marathon  and  at  Salamis. 
Even  the  members  of  the  Areopagus  had  found  them- 
selves fighting  side  by  side  with  the  common  people. 
Aristotle  distinctly  tells  us  that  at  Salamis  the  entire 
multitude  became  sailors.^  In  other  words,  it  needed 
the  national  peril  to  create  the  national  ideal.  And 
this  brings  us  to  the  third  and  most  important  stage 
in  the  history  of  Athenian  democracy.  The  leaders 
of  the  new  movement  were  Ephialtes  and  Pericles,  but 
especially  Pericles,  whose  ascendency  dates  from  about 
450  B.C.  It  was  his  task  to  regulate  the  unsteady  pulse 
of  a  people  whose  heads  had  been  somewhat  turned  by 
success.  For  they  had  saved  Greece.  They  had  done  more : 
they  had  saved  Rome.  If  Xerxes  had  won  the  victory 
of  Salamis,  his  next  movement  would  have  been  west- 
wards, because  it  was  Europe  he  had  set  out  to  conquer.^ 
Thus  he  would  have  doubtless  entered  the  Italic  penin- 
sula, and  would  have  strangled  infant  Rome,  and  Europe 
would  have  become  an  Asiatic  province.  The  Athenians 
lost  no  time  in  recognising  their  own  importance.  Suc- 
cess seems  actually  to  have  unhinged  the  minds  of  leaders 
like  Miltiades  and  Themistocles,  and  a  contagion  of  arro- 
gance began  to  spread  among  the  people.  They  demanded 
1  "  Politics,"  V.  ch.  iv.  2  Herodotus,  vii.  8. 


172  THE    NEMESIS   OF   NATIONS 

not  merely  self-government,  but  a  share  in  the  State's  re- 
venue. Or  at  least  Pericles,  anxious  to  conciliate  them, 
became  the  author  of  a  scheme  which  presents  com- 
munistic features.  In  judging  that  scheme,  however, 
we  must  not  forget  the  national  upheaval  which  lay 
behind  it.  Since  in  the  recent  crisis  all  the  citizens  had 
served  the  State,  was  it  not  just  to  make  them  partakers 
in  the  State's  revenue  .?  •  The  levelling  movement  began 
in  earnest.  It  was  not  merely  that  the  Areopagus,  a  kind 
of  House  of  Lords,  was  denuded  of  its  power,  but  that 
all  the  great  offices  of  State,  which  belonged  theoretically 
only  to  the  highest  classes,  were  now  thrown  open  to  the 
poorest  citizens.  In  other  words,  those  who  had  had  no 
genuine  political  experience  became  politically  powerful. 
A  salary  was  attached  to  all  the  offices,  and,  on  the  pro- 
posal of  Pericles — who,  it  appears,  had  got  the  idea  from 
others — the  judges  in  the  popular  courts  received  a  daily 
fee  of  two  obols.  Later,  about  425  B.C.,  it  was  raised 
to  three  obols,  and  afterwards  the  people  were  even  paid 
a  drachma,  or  about  tenpence,  for  attending  the  assembly. 
The  entire  responsibility  for  the  origin  of  this  system  has 
been  fixed  upon  Pericles,  who,  in  the  epigram  of  the  day, 
made  the  people  presents  out  of  their  own  property. 
Aristotle  charges  him  with  having  been  an  "  anti-dema- 
gogue," that  is  to  say,  the  rival  of  other  demagogues 
whom  he  succeeded  in  outbidding.'^  So  far,  however, 
as  the  dicasts'  fees  were  concerned,  the  proposal  appears 
to  have  been  inevitable.  For  at  any  moment  a  man  was 
liable  to  be  summoned  by  lot  to  the  courts,  where  he 
was  compelled  to  sit  day  after  day  hearing  cases  while 
his  own  work  was  being  neglected.  The  temptation 
was,  therefore,  to  abandon  honest  work  in  order  to  make 

1  According  to  Aristophanes  {Vesp.,  655  sqq),\ht^  democracy  was 

cheated  after  all. 

^   "  din-t57;/Lia7W7tD»'  Trpds  tt\v  Ki/iwvos  evroplav  "  {^Ath.  Consi.,  2j). 


GREECE  173 

a  living  out  of  the  law  courts.  Many  succumbed  to  it, 
and  waited  eagerly  in  the  hope  that  the  lot  might  fall 
upon  them,  for  the  fee  was  equivalent  to  a  day's  rations. 
It  was  nothing  less  than  a  windfall  for  idle  people.  It 
became  the  main  support  of  many  families,  and  there- 
fore the  industrious  habits  of  the  people  were  seriously 
injured.  This  is  the  system  ridiculed  by  Aristophanes, 
who,  in  one  of  his  comedies,  makes  a  boy  ask  his  father 
how  they  can  procure  breakfast  unless  the  court  is 
held.^  But  such  a  scheme  was  also  responsible  for 
frequent  miscarriage  of  justice.  The  decisions  in  civil 
suits  were  not  seldom  the  result  of  the  political  bias 
or  the  ignorance  of  the  judges.  Difficult  matters  were 
brought  before  untrained  minds  ;  and  when  we  remember 
that  the  judgments  of  these  "  popular  "  courts  were  final, 
since  there  was  no  higher  tribunal,  we  can  see  how 
rickety  was  the  basis  upon  which  Athenian  justice  rested. 
The  Athenian  constitution  is  described  as  a  democracy. 
The  truth  is  that  it  was  State  Socialism,  and  its  failure 
is  of  the  utmost  historical  importance.  In  some  respects 
it  was  self-government  gone  mad.  The  lot  decided  who 
were  to  be  the  successful  candidates  for  public  office,  and 
indeed  the  entire  State  became  a  lottery.  Only  the  mili- 
tary commander,  the  superintendents  of  public  wells,  and 
the  commissioners  for  festivals  were  elected  on  their 
merits,  and  hence  the  fortunes  of  the  State  might  any 
moment  fall  into  the  keeping  of  men  picked  from  the 
mob.  It  is  no  wonder  that  from  now  onwards  till  the 
end  of  her  brief  history  Athens  was  vibrating  with  in- 
tense emotion.  By  the  help  of  a  few  great  men  she 
was   now  the   greatest   power   in   Greece.      She  became 

^   "  S.y€  vvv,  u)  Trdrep,  ■fjy  p.!) 
rb  SiKaax'/ipiov  dpxuv 
KaOicTT]  vvv,  Tr6dev  iLvtj — 

—  Vesp.,  304  s(ig. 


174  THE   NEMESIS   OF   NATIONS 

suddenly  rich.  Her  achievement  was  at  last  rewarded 
by  the  homage  of  the  other  Greek  States,  which  had 
been  content  to  be  spectators  while  the  invader  was  being 
met  and  driven  back.  They  now  feared  her,  confessed 
their  impotence,  and  made  the  mistake  of  paying  her 
to  fight  for  them.  She  used  part  of  their  tribute  for 
her  own  adornment.  The  years  of  her  greatness  were 
not  an  hundred,  but  in  less  than  half  of  that  time  she 
turned  her  hegemony  into  dominion. 

21.  It  was  only  gradually,  and  by  the  help  of  great 
men  like  Themistocles,  that  the  Athenians  came  to 
understand  that  their  real  destiny,  like  the  destiny  of 
Britain,  was  on  the  sea.  The  Acropolis  was  about  five 
miles  from  the  shore,  and  it  was  not  until  the  old  town 
was  linked  by  long  walls  with  the  Pirasus  that  Athens 
really  became  (458  B.C.)  a  maritime  city.  But  there  is 
evidence  that  her  clearest  minds  regretted  the  entangle- 
ment with  the  continent.  In  one  of  his  speeches  Pericles 
reminded  the  Athenians  of  what  sea-power  could  do  for 
a  people,  and  then  he  added,  "  Imagine  that  we  were 
islanders ;  can  you  conceive  a  more  impregnable  posi- 
tion ^ "  ^  And  Xenophon  said  that  Athens  lacked  only 
one  thing  :  she  should  have  been  an  island."^  As  it  was, 
however,  she  became  the  mother  of  the  finest  Greek 
seamen,  and  if  her  sons  were  athletes  on  the  land  they 
were  also  athletes  on  the  sea.  According  to  Xenophon, 
they  proved  that  they  were  born  sailors  whenever  they 
stepped  into  a  boat.  Athens  needed  action,  and  her 
history  is  all  mobile.  When  she  at  last  knew  the  sea, 
she  felt  the  contagion  of  its  restlessness,  and  heard  its 
whisper  of  great  undertakings.  It  made  her  familiar 
with  danger,  and  all  its  hazard  entered  into  her  history. 
Moreover,  it  became  the  high-road  of  her  wealth.  Xeno- 
phon tells  us  that  after  the  Persian  wars,  when  the  Piraeus 

^  Thuc,  i.  143.  "  "Polity  of  the  Athenians,"  ii.  14. 


GREECE  175 

was  the  busiest  port  in  Greece,  even  the  lodging-house 
keepers  began  to  make  more  money.  Merchants  flocked 
to  her  market,  and  her  docks  became  crowded  with  ships. 
Like  modern  England,  she  depended  on  southern  Russia 
for  large  quantities  of  grain.  An  Athenian  functionary 
was  stationed  at  the  Bosphorus  to  control  the  export 
of  cereals,  and  another  functionary  at  the  Piraeus  to 
control  the  import.  In  order  to  keep  the  prices  low 
and  to  lay  a  check  on  the  monopolists,  Pericles  built 
a  great  magazine  to  hold  grain,  which  the  State  sold 
almost  at  cost  price  or  distributed  gratis  at  a  crisis.  He 
reminded  his  countrymen  that  they  drew  the  produce  of 
the  whole  world  into  their  harbour.  Although  there 
was  a  revenue  from  imported  goods,  Pericles  used  the 
language  of  Free  Trade.  "  We  throw  open  our  city,"  he 
said,  "  to  the  world,  and  never  by  alien  acts  exclude 
foreigners,"  ^  And  yet  when  she  chose,  Athens  could 
blockade  the  coasts  of  Greece.  The  carrying  trade  of 
the  eastern  Mediterranean  was  now  chiefly  in  her  hands, 
for  after  the  defeat  of  Persia  Phoenician  trade  rapidly 
declined.  The  wool,  the  silk,  the  fruits  and  spices  of  the 
East  were  shipped  to  the  Pirasus,  and  were  laid  out  in  the 
Athenian  market  with  the  products  of  Sicily  and  the  West. 
22.  It  was  the  policy  of  Pericles  to  make  Athens  great 
not  merely  in  commerce  but  in  religion  and  in  art, 
and  he  appears  actually  to  have  realised  certain  of  the 
views  which  Plato  expressed  later  in  his  Ideal  Republic. 
Both  Pericles  and  Plato  maintained  that  a  people  should 
live  "  in  a  land  of  health  amid  fair  sights  and  sounds."  ^ 
Whereas,  however,  Plato  appears  to  have  looked  with 
suspicion  on  the  arts,  since  he  banished  the  poets  from 
his  imaginary  state,  Pericles  invited  the  co-operation  of 
the  talent  and  genius  of  the  day  in  order  to  transform 
Athens  into  the  metropolis  of  a  great  maritime  empire. 
^  Thuc,  ii,  39.  "^  "  Republic,"  iii.  401. 


176  THE   NEMESIS   OF   NATIONS 

The  old  town  was  devoid  of  plan,  and  contained  narrow 
and  irregular  streets.  Some  of  the  thoroughfares  were 
less  than  fifteen  feet  wide.  The  majority  of  the  houses 
were  little  better  than  flat-roofed  huts  of  wood  or  mud 
or  sun-dried  brick.  Pericles,  therefore,  commissioned 
Hippodamus,  an  Asiatic  Greek,  who  had  studied  Baby- 
lonian mathematics  and  had  become  a  master  of  Ionic 
architecture,  to  design  a  city  near  the  sea.  The  Piraeus 
became  a  new  Athens  with  broader  streets  and  handsome 
quays.  But  Greek  towns  were  not  large,  and  Greece 
produced  nothing  like  Babylon.  The  country  was 
always  easy  of  access,  and  its  air  was  felt  within  the  town 
walls.  Even  when  Athens  became  crowded,  and  over- 
crowded, and  a  city  of  fashion,  wc  may  be  sure  that 
it  was  not  in  the  streets  that  the  runners  practised  for 
the  national  games.  The  city,  however,  possessed  three 
great  gymnasia  for  the  athletes.  But  since  Athenians 
loved  to  take  the  air,  roofed  galleries  and  colonnades 
were  built  in  which  the  citizens  might  meet  while 
sheltered  from  the  sun  and  rain.  Attica  was  rich  in 
the  best  kinds  of  stone,  and  the  Athenian  quarries 
are  still  actually  in  use.  Hard  limestone  from  the 
Piraeus  was  chosen  for  the  foundations  of  all  the 
famous  buildings.  Marble  came  from  Paros,  Naxos, 
and  Pcntelicus,  and  the  more  diaphanous  kinds  were 
cut  into  thin  tiles  with  which  windowless  buildings 
like  the  Parthenon  were  roofed,  so  that  the  sun  shone 
through.  It  was  upon  the  Acropolis  that  the  greatest 
expense  was  lavished.  The  Athenians,  burning  to 
efface  the  sign  of  the  Persian  occupation,  rebuilt  the 
temples  and  the  entire  city  in  so  short  a  time  and  on 
so  magnificent  a  scale  that  Plutarch  in  his  Life  of 
Pericles  tells  us  that  the  sight  was  an  astonishment 
to  all  beholders.  The  masts  of  Persian  ships  captured 
at  Salamis   are  said  to  have  been  used  in  the  architec- 


GREECE  177 

tural  scheme  of  the  Odeon  or  concert  hall,  "the  most 
beautiful  in  the  world,"  in  which  the  people  assembled 
to  hear  the  best  music  of  the  day.  In  a  portico  in 
the  market-place  Pausanias,  who  visited  Athens  in  the 
second  century  a.d.,  saw  the  great  picture  of  the  battle 
of  Marathon.  At  one  point  "  all  the  men  of  Attica 
are  closing  with  the  barbarians,"  and  at  another  the 
enemy  is  seen  fleeing  to  the  Phoenician  ships. ^  Athens 
thus  became  a  museum  of  great  memories.  In  the 
theatre  Pausanias  noticed  statues  of  Euripides,  Sophocles, 
and  ^schylus,  whose  plays  had  been  written  for  the 
democracy.  But  the  city  was  crowded  with  images  of 
the  gods  as  well  as  with  those  of  great  men.  There  was 
the  temple  of  Green  Demeter,  and  there  were  altars  in 
the  market-place  to  Pity,  Modesty,  Impulse,  and  "  The 
Voice  from  Heaven."  ^  Every  phase  of  the  vivid  Greek 
temperament — its  passion,  its  purity,  even  its  excitement 
— appears  to  have  received  sculptural  expression.  In  the 
altar  to  Impulse  we  see  the  hurry  and  heat  and  eagerness 
of  the  Greeks,  and  in  the  temple  to  Reverence  or  Modesty 
we  are  reminded  of  the  beautiful  legend  that  Modesty  was 
the  nurse  of  Athena.  It  was  on  Athena  that  money  was 
most  lavished,  because  she  was  the  titular  goddess.  Calli- 
machus  made  her  a  golden  lamp.  From  the  Acropolis 
she  dominated  the  city's  life,  and  indeed  all  Attica. 
It  was  not  merely  that  within  her  temple,  the  Parthenon, 
which  became  the  national  bank  and  treasure-house, 
Phidias  raised  her  statue  of  ivory  and  gold.  Another 
statue,  also  by  Phidias  and  made  from  the  bronze 
weapons  captured  at  Marathon,  was  erected  in  the  open 
air  on  the  summit  of  the  Acropolis.  The  gleaming 
helmet  was  seen  far  off  at  sea,  so  that  the  statue  became 
a  beacon  for  home-coming  ships.  Since  Pericles  desired 
to  make  Athens  the  religious  as  well  as  the  commercial 

1  I.  15,4.  *  "*i7M'?y/3wM6s"  (ibid.,  i.  17). 

M 


178  THE   NEMESIS   OF  NATIONS 

centre  of  the  empire,  it  was  thus  necessary  to  spend 
enormous  sums  on  the  gods.  And  when  we  remem- 
ber that  temples  and  statues  were  raised  to  Zeus  and 
Poseidon  and  Nemesis,  and  to  many  other  divinities,  we 
see  that  Athens  had  embarked  upon  a  career  of  splendour 
and  extravagance.  There  was  a  myth  that  in  the  gardens 
of  Adonis  there  was  hardly  a  difference  between  blossom 
and  fruit,  but  that  both  burst  forth  simultaneously.  In 
a  certain  sense  it  is  a  picture  of  Athens.  For  she  dis- 
played the  same  hurry  of  ripening  as  if  conscious  of  the 
brevity  of  her  glory.  The  other  Greek  States  acted 
upon  her  like  a  drag.  Not  one  of  them  understood 
her  raging  energy.  Although,  since  they  too  were 
Aryan  States,  they  possessed  courage,  none  of  them 
had  her  audacity.  Those  which  lay  landward  behind 
her  and  at  her  side  in  the  Peloponnese  remained  some- 
what somnolent,  uncouth,  and  dull,  and  looked  on  with 
a  frown  at  her  great  parade.  For  Athens  was  only  the 
facade  of  Greece. 

23,  But  now  a  strange  paradox  awaits  us  when  we 
attempt  to  examine  the  social  foundations  of  this  ambi- 
tious democracy.  No  people  were  ever  so  jealous  of 
their  freedom,  and  it  had  cost  them  centuries  of  labour 
and  even  of  bloodshed  to  win  it.  Nevertheless,  they 
created  a  Free  State  which  was  also  a  Slave  State.  After 
they  had  secured  their  own  rights  they  engaged  in  a  vast 
and  lucrative  tyranny.  For  this  gleaming  city  was  one 
of  the  great  slave-markets  of  the  ancient  world.  She 
passed  special  laws  for  the  protection  of  slave-dealers, 
upon  whose  prosperity  part  of  her  revenue  depended. 
A  tax  was  levied  on  the  sale  of  slaves,  and  the  oftener 
a  human  being  changed  hands  the  better  for  the  State. 
Her  slave  merchants  carried  on  business  both  wholesale 
and  retail.  During  war  they  were  allowed  to  follow  the 
armies,  and  were  afforded  special  facilities  for  purchasing 


GREECE  179 

pnsoners  and  for  importing  or  exporting  them.  Owing 
to  her  position  as  a  naval  power,  Athens  enjoyed  a  mono- 
poly in  this  merchandise  of  the  human  body,  and  her 
ships,  laden  with  the  human  freight,  kept  plying  between 
such  slave  centres  as  Chios,  Samos,  Cyprus,  and  Tyre. 
In  the  market  a  special  place  was  reserved  for  the  exhibi- 
tion of  the  slaves,  who  were  arranged  in  ranks  upon  a 
raised  platform,  and  were  counted,  as  in  Babylon,  by  the 
head.  They  were  referred  to  in  the  slang  of  the  market 
as  "  bodies  "  (a-dixara).  Like  cattle  they  were  examined  by 
experts,  who  subjected  them  to  a  rough  public  diagnosis. 
Gathered  from  the  ends  of  the  earth  to  await  new 
masters,  they  were  found  talking  all  languages,  known 
and  unknown.  And  there  was  a  curious  custom  in 
accordance  with  which  those  who  had  been  brought  by 
ship  had  their  feet  covered  with  whitewash  as  a  sign  that 
they  had  traversed  the  foam  of  the  sea.  The  Athenian 
character  was  essentially  cosmopolitan,  and  its  love  of 
all  that  was  new  and  strange  was  strikingly  illustrated 
in  the  international  character  of  the  slaves.  In  the 
Delphic  inscriptions  the  names  indicate  that  their  bearers 
had  been  brought  even  from  the  heart  of  Asia,  from 
the  shores  of  the  Persian  Gulf,  from  Phrygia,  Lydia, 
Cappadocia,  Syria,  Judsea,  Arabia,  Egypt,  Thessaly, 
Thrace,  the  coasts  of  the  Black  Sea,  and  even  Rome. 
Their  gross  value  has  been  reckoned  in  millions,  and, 
according  to  Aristotle,  the  most  necessary  and  valuable 
property  is  man.^  He  says  that  there  are  two  kinds  of 
property — animate  and  inanimate — and  he  defines  a  slave 
as  a  "  living  property."  ^  In  the  Athenian  market  that 
particular  kind  of  property  was  for  sale  by  auction  or 

*  "Economics,"  Bk.  I.  ch.  v. 

'  "Kai  6  SoOXos  Krrma  ri  ^/j.\f/vxov"  {Politics^  i.  4).  In  the  Nicomachean 
Ethics,  where  Aristotle  defines  slaves  as  "living  implements,"  ipr^ava, 
ifi^j/vxa,  he  adds  (viii.  ii)  that  an  implement  is  inferior  to  a  slave  only 
because  it  is  not  alive. 


i8o  THE   NEMESIS  OF   NATIONS 

by  private  bargain.  The  traffic  in  slaves  increased  as 
Hellenic  civilisation  grew  more  complex  and  luxurious. 
At  first  only  the  consequence,  it  became  later  the 
cause  of  war,  and  neither  age  nor  sex,  neither  com- 
munity of  race  or  of  religion,  protected  the  captive. 
There  was,  indeed,  a  sort  of  unwritten  law  that 
Greeks  should  never  enslave  Greeks ;  but  it  was  fre- 
quently violated,  and,  as  we  shall  see,  at  the  break- 
up of  Greece  during  her  fratricidal  war  a  furious 
desire  to  enslave  each  other  took  possession  of  the 
entire  race. 

24.  A  remarkable  trait  in  later  Greek  character  was 
a  horror  of  mechanical  work.^  Any  action  which  con- 
torted the  body  of  a  freeman  was  condemned.  It  was 
out  of  this  feeling  that  there  sprang  a  legend  according 
to  which  Athena  threw  away  even  the  flute  in  disgust 
because  it  distorted  the  lips  and  the  countenance  of  those 
who  played  it.  It  is  distinctly  declared  by  Aristotle  that 
no  free  citizen  should  be  allowed  to  engage  in  mechanical 
labour,  because  it  is  ignoble.  Those  only,  he  says,  are 
slaves  whose  bodies  Nature  has  fitted  for  that  purpose, 
and  he  quotes  with  approval  the  harsh  Greek  proverb, 
*'  Leisure  is  not  for  slaves."^  Similarly,  Spartan  law  for- 
bade freemen  to  engage  in  any  work,  because  it  was  degrad- 
ing.^ Now,  although  slavery  was  already  established  in 
the  Homeric  age,  no  such  doctrine  had  as  yet  settled  into 
Greek  minds.  On  the  contrary,  the  humblest  services 
were  considered  to  be  no  disgrace  to  princely  persons 
or  even  to  the  gods.  Paris  was  a  shepherd  ;  Andromache 
fed  the  horses  of  Hector  with  her  own  hands  ;  Achilles 

'  Polybius  (vi.  42)  contrasts  the  early  Roman  love  of  thorough  work 
with  Greek  idleness. 

2  " ov  ffxo^^  bovXois "  (^Politics,  iv.  1 5).  Mauri  (p.  70)  attempts  to  prove 
that  the  opinions  of  Aristotle  and  Plato  on  mechanical  labour  were  not 
shared  by  the  majority  of  the  Athenians. 

8  Plutarch,  Lycurgus,  16. 


GREECE  i8i 

carved  at  table  ;  and  Nausicaa,  a  king's  daughter,  went 
down  to  the  brook  to  wash  linen.  So  far  from  labour 
being  a  stigma,  both  Homer  and  Hesiod  are  never  weary 
of  praising  it.  In  fact,  Hesiod  declares  roundly  that  the 
immortal  gods  abhor  idlers.  No  doubt  in  Homer  the 
master  has  already  the  power  of  life  or  death  over  the 
slave,  but  an  organised  slave-trade  was  as  yet  carried  on 
only  by  the  Phoenicians.  Moreover,  there  was  no  great 
gulf  fixed  between  master  and  servant  in  the  early  age. 
The  handworker  was  still  a  freeman.  A  community  not 
yet  emerged  from  the  pastoral  stage  was  naturally  drawn 
closely  together  ;  and  since,  for  instance,  a  herdsman  was, 
owing  to  the  attacks  by  bandits,  exposed  to  danger,  the 
profession  of  shepherd  was  still  considered  to  be  fit  for 
a  gentleman.  When  the  raider  did  arrive,  he  had  no 
respect  for  rank,  but  carried  off  kings  and  queens,  princes 
and  princesses.  Hekabe,  Cassandra,  and  Andromache 
all  became  slaves,  and  Achilles  sold  to  a  king  the  son 
of  a  king.  Indeed,  this  menace  of  slavery,  which  was 
never  absent  from  Greek  life,  must  have  added  a  strange 
excitement  to  it.  Even  in  the  later  age  freedom  was 
guaranteed  to  no  man,  and  we  hear  that  Plato  was  once 
enslaved  and  then  ransomed  for  about  one  hundred 
pounds.  But  between  the  age  of  Homer  and  of  Plato 
the  Greek  view  of  life  had  undergone  a  profound  change. 
For  while  freemen  had  decreased  slaves  had  increased. 
And  it  is  remarkable  that  whereas  the  Greek  word  for 
"  foreigner,"  which  was  "  barbarian,"  does  not  occur  in 
Homer,  in  Aristotle  it  is  used  with  some  contempt, 
and  is  practically  synonymous  with  "  slave."  We  trace, 
indeed,  very  clearly  the  growth  of  a  certain  jingoism  in 
the  Greek  mind,  and  Aristotle  is  full  of  it.  For  instance, 
he  quotes  with  approval  the  saying  of  a  poet  that  when 
a  foreigner  becomes  the  slave  of  a  Greek,  that  is  only  as 
it  should  be.     Such  a  passage  is  a  revelation  of  all  that 


1 82  THE   NEMESIS   OF   NATIONS 

had  been  taking  place  between  the  Homeric  and  the 
Aristotelian  age,  and  it  is,  besides,  a  key  to  one  of  the 
causes  of  the  ruin  of  Greece.  For  these  words  imply  the 
gradual  evolution  of  a  free  agricultural  community  into 
an  industrial  tyranny.  Whereas  Homer  had  said  patheti- 
cally, "  Zeus  takes  away  half  the  manhood  of  a  man 
when  slavery  overtakes  him,"^  Aristotle,  analysing  human 
society  at  his  leisure,  calmly  concludes  that  slavery  is  a 
law  of  nature  which  is  advantageous  and  just.^  And 
when  we  find  even  Socrates  endorsing  the  theory  that 
it  is  just  to  enslave  one's  enemies,^  we  begin  to  see 
that  this  vast  forfeit  of  liberty  had  begun  to  be  con- 
sidered as  a  necessary  element,  and,  indeed,  as  the  basis 
of  Athenian  civilisation. 

25.  The  Greek  slave  no  more  than  the  Babylonian 
was  considered  as  a  "  person."  We  shall  see  later  that  he 
did  receive  some  protection  from  the  law,  but  the  general 
view  of  his  social  position  is  expressed  in  Aristotle's 
statement  that  the  slave  is  not  merely  the  servant  of  his 
master  but  wholly  the  master's  property.  For  that 
being,  says  Aristotle,  who  although  human  does  not 
belong  to  himself,  is  by  nature  a  slave  {(pvcrei.  SouXo?).  It 
is  perfectly  likely,  however,  that  at  Athens  as  elsewhere 
the  lot  of  the  domestic  was,  on  the  whole,  happier  than 
that  of  the  industrial  slave  or  than  that  of  the  servile 
labourer  in  the  fields.  Aristotle,  for  instance,  possessed 
thirteen  slaves,  and  there  is  every  reason  to  believe  that 
he  treated  them  with  that  moderation  which  he  commends 
to  others.  In  his  will  he  provided  for  the  liberation  of 
five  of  them,  and  bequeathed  the  remaining  eight  as 
presents  to  his  friends.  In  his  Economics  he  advises  all 
masters  to  promise  ultimate  emancipation  to  their  slaves. 

1  Odyssey,  xvii.  322.  !  "P°^'^i"'V' A*     ^    , 

SUam"  (Xenophon,  Mem.  ii.  2,  par.  2). 


GREECE  183 

And  although  the  motive  he  adduces  is  not  humane  but 
merely  one  of  policy,  since  he  says  that  the  bait  of  free- 
dom will  cause  the  slave  to  work  harder/  still,  the  fact 
remains  that  domestic  slaves  enjoyed  a  prospect  of  liberty 
which  was  denied  to  the  chained  gangs  who  laboured  in 
the  workshops  and  in  the  mines.  The  domestic  slave 
must  have  been  better  cared  for  and  more  decently 
dressed.  For  as  luxury  increased,  a  man's  social  standing 
began  to  be  measured  by  the  number  of  slaves  whom  he 
could  afford  to  keep.  Not  to  possess  a  slave  was  a  sign 
of  poverty,  but  to  possess  three  or  more  was  a  sign  of 
wealth,  and  often  became  an  occasion  for  vanity  and  dis- 
play. But  we  shall  probably  never  know  the  real  propor- 
tion of  freemen  to  slaves  at  Athens.  Much  controversy 
has  gathered  round  the  statement  of  Athenaeus  that  the 
slaves  numbered  at  one  time  400,000,  whereas  there  were 
only  21,000  adult  male  citizens.  Hume,  in  his  remark- 
able essay  on  the  "  Populousness  of  Ancient  Nations," 
says  that  the  number  of  the  slaves  in  Athens  should  not 
be  reckoned  as  more  than  40,000.^  But  some  later 
investigators  have  seen  little  reason  for  accepting  this 
opinion.  Boeckh,  for  instance,  examined  the  problem 
very  thoroughly,  and  came  to  the  conclusion  that  the 
ratio  of  freemen  to  slaves  was  about  i  :  4.  The  number 
of  slaves  cannot,  he  thought,  have  been  less  than  365,000. 
On  the  other  hand,  these  and  similar  calculations  based 
on  the  statements  of  Athenasus  have  been  re-examined 
since  Hume's  essay  was  written,  and  have  been  once 
more  rejected.  It  has  been  pointed  out,  for  instance, 
that  other  places  in  Greece,  such  as  Corinth  and  ^gina, 
could  never  have  contained  the  number  of  slaves  which 
Athenaeus  assigns  to  them,  and  the  presumption  is  that 
if  he  was  wrong  in  two  cases  he  was  also  wrong  in  the 

1  Econ.,  Bk.  I.  5. 

J  Essays,  vol.  i.  p.  419 ;  ed.  Green  and  Grose,  1875. 


1 84  THE   NEMESIS   OF   NATIONS 

third.  It  has  even  been  supposed  that  in  the  time  of 
Pericles  the  entire  population  of  Athens,  including  the 
Piraeus,  cannot  have  exceeded  150,000,  and  of  those 
some  thirty  or  forty  thousand  were  freemen.  This 
calculation  is  based  on  the  supposition  that  about 
430  B.C.  the  total  census  of  Attica  numbered  only 
235,000  persons,  including  100,000  slaves.  But  these 
figures  are  probably  far  too  low.  We  hear  of  a  single 
citizen  who  owned  as  many  as  1000  slaves  whom  he 
employed  in  the  mines,  and  of  another  who  owned  600. 
The  father  of  Demosthenes  kept  fifty-two,  and  we  know 
that  some  philosophers  had  as  many  as  ten.  In  any  case, 
all  writers  are  agreed  that  the  citizens  were  vastly  out- 
numbered. There  is  no  reason  for  believing  that  in 
Attica  the  disproportion  was  less  than  in  Sparta.  Now, 
from  a  passage  in  Herodotus,  who  mentions  the  number 
of  helots  present  at  the  battle  of  Plataea,  it  has  been 
calculated  that  the  number  of  helots  in  Sparta  must  have 
been  at  least  220,000.  And  when  we  are  told  by  Thucy- 
dides  that  on  one  occasion  as  many  as  20,000  Attic 
slaves,  "the  majority  of  whom  were  artisans,"^  escaped, 
we  are  forced  to  conclude  that  Attica  contained  a  dense 
servile  population. 

26.  It  was  found  to  be  cheaper  to  buy  slaves  than 
to  breed  them,  and  marriage  was  seldom  encouraged. 
And  yet  many  slaves  must  have  been  born  on  Attic 
soil,  because  there  were  special  names  for  those  who  were 
reared  in  the  household.  Especially  in  the  country, 
where  living  was  cheaper  than  in  the  town,  the  breeding 
of  slaves  was  doubtless  found  to  be  profitable,  although 
it  is  true  that  Xenophon  does  not  commend  the  practice. 
But  whether  reared  at  home  or  brought  from  abroad, 
slaves  became  so  numerous  that  free  labour  was  ruined. 

^  Thuc,  vii.  27. 


GREECE  185 

The  gradual  destitution  of  skilled  freemen,  who  were 
unable  to  face  the  competition  of  the  vast  market  of 
cheap  servile  labour,  formed  one  of  the  acute  social 
problems  at  Athens.  By  its  encouragement  of  the  servile 
system,  the  State  was  guilty  of  creating  a  numerous 
class  of  unemployed  freemen,  who  were  at  last  com- 
pelled to  join  the  ranks  of  the  slaves.  The  day  was 
when  bakers,  carpenters,  shoemakers,  and  spinners  were 
all  freemen,  but  the  day  came  when  they  found  slaves 
as  their  rivals  in  these  various  trades.^  Not,  indeed,  that 
slave  bakers,  slave  carpenters,  slave  shoemakers  received 
wages.  In  Athens,  as  in  Babylon,  the  wages  were  paid  to 
the  slave-owner,  who  hired  out  his  men  as  he  hired  out 
his  beasts  of  burden.  We  even  hear  of  physicians  as 
slaves.  In  fact,  almost  the  entire  industrial  activity  of 
the  State  was  carried  on  by  the  servile  population,  whose 
masters  were  only  overseers  drawing  incomes  from  the 
involuntary  labour  of  those  who  were  their  captives. 
Weaving,  tanning,  cutler  work,  milling,  building,  dyeing, 
flute-making,  lace-making,  carriage-building,  and  ar- 
moury were  all  carried  on  by  the  slaves.  In  those  days 
strikes  took  the  form  of  a  general  stampede,  which, 
however,  owing  to  the  rigid  discipline,  only  rarely 
happened.  But  if  escape  were  at  all  possible  there  was 
no  motive  to  remain,  since  no  wage  was  earned.  Aristotle, 
who  appears  to  have  been  fascinated  by  the  problem  of 
slavery  since  he  recurs  to  it  so  often,  points  out  that  the 
customary  "  reward  of  a  slave  is  his  food."  ^ 

27.  Athenian  society  thus  presented  an  extraordinary 

^  Beloch  {Die  AHische  Politik  sett  Periklcs^  p.  7,  «.)  says  that  it  is 
a  "  childish  view  "  to  suppose  that  at  Athens  all  mechanical  labour  was 
performed  by  slaves.  Nevertheless,  in  his  work  on  the  population  of 
Greece  and  Rome  he  states  (pp.  504  sqq^  that  slave  labour  ruined  the 
free  mechanic  and  drove  him  from  the  market.  An  excellent  account 
of  the  destruction  of  free  labour  at  Athens  is  to  be  found  in  Mauri's 
/  Cittadini  Lavoratori  dell'  Attica,  pp.  83  sqq. 

^  Econ.,  i.  5. 


1 86  THE   NEMESIS   OF  NATIONS 

spectacle.  It  was  based  upon  a  system  of  kidnapping 
and  pressgang.  If  a  citizen  took  a  walk  into  the 
country  he  saw  agricultural  labourers  working  chained 
in  the  fields.^  If  he  went  into  a  friend's  garden  he  found 
that  the  gardener  was  a  slave,  and  probably  a  Persian, 
because  the  Athenians,  who  were  lovers  of  gardens,  pre- 
ferred the  Oriental  methods  of  horticulture,  which  at  that 
period  were  famous.  If,  again,  our  Athenian  returned 
to  Athens  to  call  upon  another  friend,  he  was  admitted 
by  a  slave  porter.  If,  finally,  the  visitor  were  invited 
to  dinner,  he  would  be  attended  by  perfumed  slaves. 
For  the  Athenians,  who  chose  for  their  personal  attendants 
the  handsomest  slaves,  had  begun  to  convert  them  into 
instruments  of  luxury.  The  growth  of  ostentation  is 
well  marked  in  the  catalogues  of  names  of  domestic 
slaves  which  Athenaeus  has  handed  down.^  A  wealthy 
house  contained  a  hierarchy  of  sycophants.  In  fact, 
whereas  all  citizens  were  equal,  it  was  among  the  slaves 
that  the  various  grades  of  superiority  were  most  clearly 
seen,  and  probably  felt,  from  the  rude  muscular  drudge, 
toiling  day  and  night  in  the  mines,  to  the  supple  and 
elegant  minister  of  domestic  luxury  and  vice.  The 
great  increase  of  Athenian  wealth  was  unaccompanied 
by  the  technical  education  of  the  governing  class.  For 
that  class  was  interested  only  in  the  finer  forms  of 
culture.  War,  politics,  athletics,  philosophy,  and,  in 
a   more  restricted  sense,  music,^  were  the  proper  occu- 

1  Xenophon,  Econ.,  iii.  4.  In  the  passage  in  question,  however, 
Socrates  points  out  that  those  slaves  who  were  not  shackled  worked 
far  better,  and  he  recommends  more  liberty  on  grounds  of  good 
husbandry. 

»  Deip.,  93.     Thus  we   have  "the  waiting  man,"   "the  assistant, 
"the   attendant,"    "the    man    who    walks    before,"    "the    confidential 
servant,"  "  the  drudge,"  &c. 

»  On  the  question  whether  music  should  or  should  not  form  part  of  a 
gentleman's  education,  see  the  curious  discussion  in  Aristotle's  "  Politics," 
VII.  ch.  vi.  It  was  still  considered  doubtful  whether  a  musician  was  not 
a  "buffoon."     Ibid.,  ch.  v. 


GREECE  187 

pations  of  a  gentleman.  An  unproductive  minority 
were  the  spectators  of  the  compulsory  labour  of 
thousands  of  slaves.  That  the  outbreaks  were  fewer 
than  might  have  been  expected  is  probably  due  to  the 
fact  that  the  slave-owners  acted  upon  the  cruel  advice 
of  writers  like  Plato  and  Aristotle,  who  pointed  out 
that,  to  avoid  conspiracy,  slaves  speaking  the  same 
language  should  not  be  allowed  to  work  together.^ 
The  real  capital  of  Athenian  society  was  thus  living 
capital  in  the  shape  of  human  muscles,  and  this  vast 
loan  of  labour  was  not  borrowed  but  seized,  and  no 
interest  was  paid.  Moreover,  it  was  a  form  of  capital 
which,  once  destroyed,  was  easily  replaced.  A  handful 
of  men  were  governing  a  nation  in  chains.  History  is 
often,  no  doubt,  a  record  of  social  outbursts ;  but, 
after  all,  its  main  theme  is  the  eternal  patience  of 
Humanity. 

28.  Some  writers  suppose  that  because  the  house- 
hold slaves  were  allowed  to  take  part  in  the  worship 
of  the  household  gods  their  position  in  the  family  can- 
not have  been  very  degraded.  But  this  fact  is  probably 
only  the  Greek  equivalent  of  that  astute  modern  view 
which  sees  in  religion  a  kind  of  police.  And,  indeed, 
it  is  not  unlikely  that  the  myths  concerning  the  slavery 
of  such  gods  as  Poseidon  and  Apollo  may  have  been  in- 
vented by  some  cunning  mind  which  felt  the  need  of 
a  religious  sanction  for  tyranny.  In  the  same  way  the 
consolations  of  Christianity  are  offered  by  wealthy  Chris- 
tians to  the  modern  poor.  But  what  is  really  remark- 
able in  connection  with  the  religious  education  of  Greek 
slaves  is  that  their  god  was  Cronus,  a  god  who  had  been 
dethroned,  who  had  lost  his  rights,  and,  according  to  the 
vain  belief  of  the  slaves,  was  one  day  to  recover  them. 

^  Plato,  "  Laws,"  vi.  yyj  ;  Aristotle,  Econ.,  i.  5. 


1 88  THE   NEMESIS   OF   NATIONS 

For  they,  too,  must  often  have  been  dreaming  of  their 
dethroned  rights.  There  is  one  other  curious  contra- 
diction in  Greek  religious  character  which  deserves  to 
be  mentioned,  because  it  indicates  a  kind  of  snobbery. 
Whereas  it  was  customary  to  extol  the  divine  hero 
Hercules,  the  eternal  labourer,  it  was  no  less  usual  to 
despise  his  humble  working  representative,  the  human 
slave. 

29.  When  a  new  slave  arrived  in  a  Greek  household 
he  was  made  to  sit  upon  the  hearth  like  a  suppliant. 
Then  the  mistress  of  the  house  sprinkled  certain  dried 
fruits  upon  his  head,  and  muttered  prayers  for  the  suc- 
cess of  the  new  purchase.  This  initiation,  however,  did 
not  involve  membership  of  the  family,  but  was  only  a 
sign  that  new  human  property  had  been  acquired.  There 
is  evidence  that  even  the  ordinary  household  slave  was 
sometimes  treated  more  or  less  like  an  enemy.  When, 
for  instance,  he  was  engaged  in  baking  for  the  household 
an  iron  collar  was  fastened  round  his  throat  in  such  a 
way  that  it  was  impossible  for  him  to  eat  any  morsel  of 
the  bread  he  had  baked, ^  The  master  legally  possessed 
full  rights  of  punishment,  and  made  use  of  various  in- 
struments of  torture.  There  was  a  whole  workshop  of 
ingenious  tools  for  punishing  lazy  or  disobedient  slaves. 
Thus  we  hear  of  the  lash,  the  rack,  the  wheel,  and  of 
special  instruments  for  dislocating  the  limbs.^  There 
was  only  one  asylum  for  a  slave  who  fled  from  these 
miseries — the  temple  of  a  god.  But  although  he  was 
inviolate  as  soon  as  he  had  entered  its  precincts,  in- 
genious stratagems  were  invented  to  evade  the  law. 
It  is  profoundly  significant  that  it  was  often  to  the 
temple  of  the  Furies  that  the  fugitive  ran,  as  if  to 
make   one    last   appeal   to   those    guardians  of   outraged 

*  Pollux  (vii.  20)  in  Biichsenschiitz,  p.  159. 

*  Wallon,  vol.  i.  p.  310. 


GREECE  189 

humanity.  But  the  runaway  was  often  allowed  to  starve 
to  death  at  the  altars,  or  the  priest  was  bribed  to  deliver 
him.  Or  else  the  slave,  maddened  by  hunger,  dashed 
out  of  the  temple,  and  was  immediately  recaptured  by 
his  pursuers,  who  had  been  lying  in  wait.  It  was  not 
difficult  to  recognise  an  escaped  slave,  because  his  brow 
was  branded.  If,  indeed,  he  had  contrived  to  place  upon 
his  head  the  garland  sacred  to  a  god — for  instance,  the 
laurel  of  Apollo — he  was  again  inviolate.  Yet  we  hear 
that  that  symbol,  so  charged  with  human  emotion,  was 
often  plucked  from  his  brow,  and  thus  by  casuistry  and 
by  a  fiction  the  pursuer's  hand  was  again  legally  laid  upon 
the  fugitive.  In  a  small  city  like  Athens,  or  even  in  the 
country  lanes  of  Attica,  there  was  little  chance  of  escape. 
And  that  chance  was  further  diminished  in  later  Greece, 
because  there  was  actually  instituted  a  system  of  insur- 
ance against  runaways.  A  certain  Antimenes  of  Rhodes 
founded  an  insurance  agency  whereby  masters  who 
paid  a  yearly  subscription  of  eight  drachmas,  or  about 
seven  shillings,  received  the  value  of  the  fugitive  slave 
if  his  capture  had  become  impossible.  We  are  told  that 
Antimenes  made  a  fortune.^  Again,  although  the  Greek 
States  were  seldom  at  peace  with  each  other,  they  were 
united  in  the  suppression  of  their  slaves.  Athens  once 
sent  a  large  body  of  troops  to  support  the  Spartans  in 
putting  down  a  rebellion  of  helots.^  For  it  was  not 
only  Athens  that  possessed  slaves.  Every  Greek  State 
had  converted  itself  into  a  cage  for  those  "  tame  animals," 
as  Aristotle  calls  them.^  But  sometimes  they  grew  wild 
and  terrorised  their  keepers, 

30.  In  Athens,  as  in  Babylon,  the  slave's  best  chance 
of  tolerable  treatment  lay  in  his  market  value.  For 
a  costly  slave,  like   a  good  horse,  was  worth  care.     In 

^  Aristotle,  Econ.,  ii.  35.  *  Thuc,  i.  102. 

^  Or  at  least  he  classes  them  with  tame  animals  {Politics^  \.  5). 


I90  THE   NEMESIS   OF   NATIONS 

the  age  of  Demosthenes  an  educated  slave  was,  indeed, 
not  worth  more  than  a  well-bred  horse,  i.e.  about  fifty 
pounds.  But  an  average  hack  cost  only  about  three 
minae,  or  a  little  over  twelve  pounds,  whereas  an  average 
slave  cost  far  less.  Xenophon  considered  eight  pounds 
a  very  fair  price  for  a  labourer,  but  he  points  out 
that  other  slaves  were  not  worth  even  two  pounds, 
or  half  a  mina.  The  price,  of  course,  varied  according 
to  age,  health  and  vigour,  personal  attractions  and  attain- 
ments. According  to  Plutarch,  Alcibiades  once  gave  the 
sum  of  seventy  minae,  or  not  much  less  than  three  hun- 
dred pounds,  for  a  dog,  but  it  was  rarely  that  a  human 
being  was  sold  for  so  great  a  sum.  The  slaves  of 
luxury  were,  of  course,  more  expensive,  but  an  ordinary 
mechanic  was  to  be  had  easily  for  less  than  four  pounds 
sterling.^  For  a  slave  who  possessed  any  special  accom- 
plishments, twenty  pounds  appears  to  have  been  a  usual 
price.  On  the  other  hand,  cooks  and  flute-players 
were  to  be  had  at  ninepence  per  day.^  A  singer  was 
once  sold  for  five  pounds,  and  a  schoolmaster  or  gram- 
marian for  about  seventeen.  When  Alexander  the 
Great  captured  Thebes  he  sold  30,000  of  the  in- 
habitants into  slavery,  and  he  received  about  ;^3,  3s. 
per  head. 

31.  Unlike  Sparta,  the  Athenian  State,  although  it 
owned  public  slaves,  was  not  the  immediate  proprietor 
of  a  great  servile  population.  Nevertheless,  Athens  was 
the  indirect  employer  of  a  large  amount  of  servile  labour. 
The  famous  silver  mines  of  Laurion,  situated  in  the 
extreme  southern  promontory  of  Sunium,  became  the 
chief  source  of  Athenian  revenue,  and  the  miners  were 
slaves.     The    district    was,   and    still   is,   the   most   arid 

^  Boeckh  (p.  86)  mentions  100  drachmae  as  the  average  price  of  a 
miner. 

*  The  price  of  a  flute-player,  however,  was  often  as  high  as  twenty 
minae.     C/.  Richter,  p.  106. 


GREECE  191 

and  desolate  in  Attica,  and,  save  for  two  small  springs, 
is  waterless.  Agriculture  does  not  exist,  because  the 
soil  is  a  deposit  of  marble,  mica,  limestone,  and  slate. 
Before  mining  operations  had  begun  the  surrounding 
heights  were  deeply  wooded,  but  the  trees  were  cut 
down  for  fuel  to  feed  the  furnaces,  and  as  early  as 
the  fourth  century  b.c.  wood  was  being  imported. 
To-day  only  a  few  pine-trees  remain,  and  it  is  rare 
if  the  cyclamen,  the  violet,  and  the  wild  thyme  spring 
out  of  the  rocky  soil  and  relieve  the  monotony  of 
the  landscape.  In  the  age  of  the  Athenian  splendour, 
however,  Laurion  played  a  very  important  part,  and 
it  is  well  to  remember  that  behind  the  great  display 
of  Athenian  art  a  stern  and  in  many  respects  a  tragic 
industrial  system  was  creating  the  means  without  which 
that  art  would  never  have  existed.  The  heaps  of 
ancient  slag  and  scoriae  and  the  remains  of  furnaces 
and  workshops  which  have  been  discovered  at  Laurion 
by  modern  excavators  bring  us  face  to  face  with  the 
actual  methods  of  Attic  industry,  and  bear  witness 
to  an  immense  activity.  And  it  is  singular  to  think 
that  the  same  soil  is  still  producing  its  metal,  and 
that  two  modern  mining  companies  extract  annually 
about  ten  thousand  tons  of  lead.  The  silver  appears 
to  have  been  exhausted  by  the  Athenians,  but  Laurion 
contains  also  lead,  zinc,  and  even  iron.  Many  of  the 
actual  tools  with  which  the  Athenian  slaves  worked 
have  been  discovered  in  the  mines — iron  hammers, 
chisels  with  bent  edges  where  the  blows  had  been  struck, 
shovels,  pickaxes,  and  spades.^  With  those  paltry  im- 
plements the  slave  was  compelled  to  fight  his  way 
through  the  hard  rock,  slowly  creating  galleries  as  he 
went.     Many    of   these    galleries    begin    at    a   depth   of 

'  Ardaillon,  pp.  21  sqq. 


192  THE   NEMESIS   OF   NATIONS 

150  feet,  and  are  often  only  large  enough  to  admit 
the  human  body.  The  fact  that  labour  was  necessarily 
slow,  and  that  nevertheless  the  annual  return  of  silver 
was  large,  implies  that  great  numbers  of  slaves  must 
have  been  employed.  Some  writers  have  been  content 
with  an  estimate  of  ten  thousand  workmen.  But  those 
who  have  visited  the  mines  believe  that  that  number 
should  be  at  least  doubled.  A  single  capitalist,  one 
Sosias  of  Thrace,  employed  one  thousand  slaves  who 
had  been  leased  to  him  by  another  capitalist,  Nicias. 
Moreover,  the  yearly  wastage  among  the  slaves  was 
so  great  that  many  thousands  must  have  passed  through 
the  hands  of  the  overseers. 

32.  The  fact  that  more  than  two  thousand  shafts  have 
been  discovered  indicates  the  wide  extent  of  the  opera- 
tions. Some  of  those  shafts  reach  a  depth  of  400  feet, 
and  in  the  perpendicular  walls  there  have  been  noticed 
niches  where  the  ladders  once  rested.  Ancient  writers 
mention  that  the  air  below  was  very  foul,  and  yet  a 
rude  system  of  ventilation  had  been  devised,  because 
mention  is  made  of  air-shafts  (\J/i^x"?'^7'")-  ^^  ^^ 
difficult  to  believe,  however,  that  the  hygienic  and 
sanitary  conditions  were  even  tolerable.  Plutarch,  for 
example,  makes  Nicias  responsible  for  the  death  of 
numberless  miners.  Some  interesting  calculations  have 
been  made  with  a  view  to  discovering  the  duration  of 
the  day's  labour.  Many  of  the  clay  lamps  used  by  the 
miners  have  been  found,  and,  according  to  certain  experi- 
ments, those  lamps  when  filled  with  oil  will  burn  for  ten 
hours.  It  was  thus,  perhaps,  not  more  than  a  ten  hours' 
shift.  This  view  has  been  confirmed  by  the  fact  mentioned 
by  Pliny,^  that  in  the  Spanish  mines  the  same  method  was 

*  "  Cuniculis  per  magna  spatia  actis,  cavantur  montes  ad  lucernarum 
lumina.  Eadem  mensura  vigiliarum  est;  multisque  mensibus  non 
cernitur  dies  "  (N.  H.,  xxxiii.  4,  70).     I  owe  this  reference  to  ArdaiUon. 


GREECE 


193 


adopted.  For  the  mines,  of  course,  were  utterly  dark. 
Some  of  the  actual  chains  which  shackled  the  miners 
as  they  chiselled  their  way  through  the  passages  have 
been  discovered.  We  can  imagine  the  frequent  anxious 
glances  which  the  slave  cast  on  the  little  flame  which 
had  been  given  him  as  a  clock  to  measure  the  hours 
of  his  slavery.  Modern  visitors  to  these  interminable 
galleries  have  noticed,  cut  in  the  walls,  numerous  niches 
where  the  lamp  was  placed  as  the  workman  hewed  his 
way  along. 

33.  The  ore  was  brought  to  the  surface  either  in  bags 
strapped  to  the  backs  of  slaves  employed  for  that  pur- 
pose, or  in  baskets  attached  to  ropes  and  drawn  up  by 
pulleys.      In   the    workshops    (epyao-Wjpia)    the   analysis 
took  place,  and  special  slaves  were  engaged  in  bruising 
the  ore,  others   in   washing,   and   others  in  smelting  it. 
Iron  pestles,  stone  mortars,  and  sieves  were  used  in  the 
process,  and  in   various  shapes  the  metal  was  taken  to 
Athens   to   be  stamped.      For   the    State  remained  sole 
proprietor  of  the  mines,  even   after  mining  rights  had 
been  assigned  to  private  individuals.     The  State's  share, 
payable  in  bullion  or  in  cash,  was  augmented  by  a  per- 
centage  on  the   profits.      The  workshops  were    private 
property,  and  could  be  sold   by  one   lessee  to  another  ; 
but,   contrary  to  the  views  of  earlier  writers,  it  appears 
that  the  mining  rights  were  not  transferable,  and  that 
concessions  could  be  obtained  only  from  the  State.     A 
fact  which  adds  a  strange  piquancy  to  the  ethics  of  the 
entire  system  is  that  different  sections  of  the  mine  were 
named  in  honour  of  different  gods.     Thus  we  hear  of 
one  portion  called  after  Poseidon.     He  and  Athena  and 
Nemesis  had  each  a  temple  in  Laurion,  but  surely  it  was 
to  the  temple  of  Nemesis  that  the  thoughts  of  the  slaves 
chiefly  turned. 

34.  If  we  wish  to  measure  the  amount  of  human 


N 


194  THE   NEMESIS   OF   NATIONS 

fatigue  involved   by  the  successful   exploitation   of  the 
mines  of  Laurion,  we  cannot  do  better  than  turn  to  a 
picture  of  similar  operations  in  ancient  Egypt.    It  is  very 
remarkable   that   Plato,   who  was  fascinated   by  Egypt, 
should   have   proposed,   for  the   treatment   of  Athenian 
slaves,  the  regulations  which  were  in  force  in  the  Egyp- 
tian mines.      For   it   was  a   rule  in   Egypt   to  separate 
those  slaves  who  spoke  the  same  language.     And  it  is 
very  probable   that   the    Greek    speculators,   merchants, 
and  engineers  who   had   visited  Egypt  had  come   back 
full    of   enthusiasm   for   Egyptian    industrial   methods. 
Now,  Diodorus  Siculus  has  given  us  a  picture  of  slave 
labour    in    the    gold   mines   of  Egypt   which   may   well 
represent    what    was    passing     in    the    silver    mines    of 
Laurion.     The  slaves,   we  are   told,   were  made  up  of 
criminals    and    ordinary   prisoners  of  war.      Since  they 
spoke    different    languages,    conspiracy   was    impossible  ; 
and,  besides,  they  were  all  in  chains.     The  most  robust 
were  employed  in  breaking  the  soil  with   pickaxes,  and 
they  followed  the  natural  windings  of  the  veins  of  metal 
far  into  the   earth's   interior,   thus   creating   a  series   of 
subterranean  galleries.     They  worked  naked,  and  lamps 
were  strapped  to  their  brows  to  illuminate  the  darkness. 
"  They   are  compelled   to   work    day    and    night    inces- 
santly," says  Diodorus,   '*and  are  watched  so  carefully 
that  escape  is  impossible,"  ^     Any  relaxation  of  toil,  any 
pause  to  ease  the  bent  body,  was  immediately  punished 
by  the  lash  or  by  the   blows   of  the    overseer.      Child 
labour  was  also  employed,  because  sometimes  the  wind- 
ings   and   openings   were   so   narrow   that   only   a  child 
could    enter    them     and     gather    the     precious    debris, 
which  was  then    carried    to    the    mouth    of   the    mine, 
where    the    ore    was    extracted.       Neither    age    nor    sex 
was    spared,    says     Diodorus,    and    he    adds    quaintly 
1  Bk.  III.  12,  Miot's  translation  (Paris,  1834),  vol.  ii.p.  17. 


GREECE 


195 


that  the  slaves  "had  no  time  to  look  after  their  own 
bodies." ' 

2S'  Whereas,  however,  slaves  in  Egypt  were  kept  at 
work  only  in  order  to  increase  the  revenues  of  a  king,  in 
Attica  they  were  kept  at  work  only  in  order  to  increase 
the  revenues  of  a  democracy.  It  has  been  supposed  that 
because  at  Laurion  revolts  were  few  the  condition  of  the 
slaves  may  not  have  been  as  unhappy  as  writers  like 
Plutarch  believed  it  to  be.  But  if  revolts  were  few  the 
reason  was  that  the  slaves  were  chained.  Besides,  the 
removal  of  a  ladder  or  the  blocking  of  a  passage  would 
be  sufficient  to  compel  the  slaves  to  capitulate,  and  under 
such  circumstances  insurrection  would  have  been  impos- 
sible. Since  a  strike  in  the  mines  would  have  paralysed 
Athenian  trade,  we  may  be  sure  that  the  utmost  pre- 
cautions were  taken  to  prevent  it.  The  miners  were 
practically  in  jail,  and  in  the  most  hopeless  of  jails,  and 
the  entire  community  was  their  jailer.  And  yet  Athens 
owed  not  merely  her  commercial  but  her  political  great- 
ness to  the  mines  of  Laurion.  The  silver  was  so  pure 
that  it  became  famous,  and  other  Greek  states  bought  it 
for  their  own  coinage.  Athens  became  the  silver  market 
of  the  eastern  Mediterranean.  The  Laurion  mines  were, 
in  fact,  her  greatest  asset,  and  they  helped  to  raise  and  to 

^  It  is  interesting  to  compare  this  narrative  not  merely  with  the 
account  of  the  Athenian  mines  but  with  a  recent  account  of  modern 
mining  operations  in  South  Africa.  Sir  William  Crookes,  in  an  address 
to  the  British  Associates, said  "that  in  the  diamond  mines  at  Kimberley 
the  scene  below  ground  was  bewildering  in  its  complexity.  All  was  dirt, 
mud,  and  grime :  half-naked  men,  dark  as  mahogany,  lithe  as  athletes, 
dripping  with  perspiration,  picking,  shovelling,  wheeling  the  trucks  to 
and  fro,  keepmg  up  a  weird  chant,  which  rose  in  force  and  rhythm  when  a 
greater  task  called  for  excessive  muscular  strain.  The  whole  scene  was 
more  suggestive  of  a  coal  mine  than  a  diamond  mine,  and  all  this  mighty 
organisation,  this  strenuous  expenditure  of  energy,  this  costly  machinery, 
this  ceaseless  toil  of  skilled  and  black  labour,  went  on  day  and  night 
just  to  win  a  few  stones  wherewith  to  deck  my  lady's  finger." — Report 
of  the  meeting  of  the  British  Association  at  Kimberley  (Morning  Post 
Sept.  6,  1905).  ' 


196  THE   NEMESIS   OF   NATIONS 

maintain  her  credit.  Her  slaves  were,  therefore,  the  real 
creators  of  her  financial  prestige,  and  the  authors  of  her 
monopoly.  We  may  even  go  further  and  say  that  it 
was  to  them  that  she  owed  her  navy  and  her  naval 
supremacy.  In  the  time  of  Themistocles  a  proposal 
was  made  to  divide  among  the  adult  citizens  the  surplus 
revenue  of  the  mines. ^  But  Themistocles  persuaded  the 
Athenians  to  build  ships  with  the  money,  and  those  ships 
gained  the  victory  at  Salamis.  When,  again,  we  remember 
that  lead  from  the  mines  was  used  as  mortar  in  the 
fortified  walls  and  as  cement  for  great  buildings  like 
the  Parthenon,  and  that  many  of  the  by-products,  such 
as  colouring  matter,  were  indispensable  in  various  manu- 
factures, we  see  that  the  Athenian  slaves  made  an  organic 
contribution  to  Athenian  prosperity.  Their  labour  was 
one  of  the  main  guarantees  that  the  State  would  con- 
tinue to  meet  her  obligations,  and  be  able,  for  instance, 
to  provide  wheat  gratis  to  the  hungry  democracy.  It  is 
all  the  more  remarkable,  therefore,  that  in  the  works  of 
Greek  thinkers  we  meet  with  no  recognition  of  the  unjust 
basis  upon  which  the  political  structure  of  Athens  was 
reared.  If  we  except  the  poets,  who  now  and  again 
seem  to  have  been  conscious  that  there  was  something 
wrong,  the  best  Athenian  thinkers,  apart  from  the 
Cynics  and  the  Stoics,  acquiesced  in  a  system  which 
they  believed  was  to  be  permanent.  For  they  were 
unable  to  conceive  that  a  State  could  have  any  other 
industrial  basis  than  slavery.  Their  view  was  that 
a  State  should  be  composed  on  the  one  hand  of  free 
citizens,  whose  main  business  was  to  be  self-culture,  and 
on  the  other  of  a  great  inarticulate  enslaved  mass,  who 
should  be  the  means  of  creating  the  national  wealth. 
Xenophon,  for  instance,  who  was  specially  interested  in 
the  silver  mines,  wrote  a  pamphlet  to  prove  that  a  still 

^  Herodotus,  vii.  144. 


GREECE  197 

greater  revenue  might  be  derived  from  them.  He  de- 
clared, what  certainly  would  not  be  true  to-day,  that  the 
supply  of  silver  could  never  become  a  drug  in  the  market, 
and  that  since  the  mines  were  inexhaustible,  the  State,  by 
employing  more  slaves,  would  be  able  to  produce  more 
silver.  Therefore,  he  said,  Athens  should  follow  the 
example  of  her  own  citizens  and  purchase  slaves  for  the 
purpose  of  hiring  them  out  to  work  in  the  mines.  For 
every  free  Athenian  citizen  there  should  be  at  least  three 
slaves  in  the  mines.  Thus  21,000  citizens  would  possess 
63,000  public  slaves,  and  those  who  required  slaves  would 
begin  to  hire  them  from  the  State.  Further,  the  slaves 
were  to  be  branded  with  the  Athenian  coat  of  arms.^ 
But,  adds  Xenophon  naively,  we  must  treat  them  well 
in  case  they  might  become  dangerous  in  time  of  war. 

36.  Xenophon  probably  expressed  average  Greek 
opinion  regarding  the  exploitation  of  slaves.  It  would 
be  wrong,  however,  to  ignore  the  fact  that  from  Homer 
downwards  there  were  recurrent  protests  against  slavery. 
Homer's  more  tender  view  reappears  in  men  like 
iEschylus  and  Euripides,  and  at  length  finds  philosophic 
support  in  the  school  of  Antisthenes  and  of  Zeno.  At 
first  sight  it  looks  as  if  Xenophon's  rough  practical 
spirit,  which  was  the  spirit  of  the  Stock  Exchange,  had 
been  fully  shared  by  great  men  like  Plato  and  Aristotle. 
In  the  "  Republic,"  however,  Plato  unfolds  the  plan  of 
a  State  in  which  there  are  no  slaves,  and  he  makes  a 
sympathetic  reference  to  those  "  hirelings  "  who  sell  their 
labour."  Even  in  the  "  Laws,"  where  slavery  reappears, 
he  points  out  that  "  many  a  man  has  found  his  slaves 
superior  in  every  way  to  brethren  or  sons."  ^  It  is  clear 
that  both  to  him  and  to  Aristotle  slavery  offered  prob- 
lems of  anxious  thought.     It  seems  to  be  Plato's  later 

^  Xenophon,  "Ways  and  Means,"  iv.  21. 
'  Rep.,  ii,  371.  3  "Laws,"  vi.  776. 


198  THE   NEMESIS   OF   NATIONS 

view  that  the  organisation  of  the  State  involved  some 
form  of  servile  labour.  But  when  he  mentions  the  fact 
that  it  was  possible  for  the  master  to  fall  into  the  power 
of  his  slaves,  and  that  it  requires  a  slave-owner  to  pro- 
tect a  slave-owner,  he  is  really  confessing  that  the  system 
rests  not  on  right  but  on  might.  In  the  case  of  Aris- 
totle, indeed,  it  is  idle  to  deny  a  certain  intolerance  and 
a  more  settled  conviction  on  the  necessity  of  slavery. 
As  spectators  of  the  unstable  elements  in  Greek  society, 
both  philosophers  probably  felt  that  it  would  be  madness 
to  encourage  the  forces  of  anarchy.  The  entire  system 
had  created  a  moral  and  economic  dilemma.  To  loosen 
still  further  the  underpins  of  a  social  fabric  which  was 
always  in  danger  of  collapse  would,  they  doubtless 
supposed,  only  create  an  industrial  crisis  with  increased 
suffering.  But  Aristotle's  laborious  arguments  ^  against 
those  who  had  declared  slavery  to  be  "  contrary  to 
nature,"  -n-apa  (pvaiv^  are  the  sign  of  the  existence  of  a 
strong  opposition  party.  That  opposition  is  generally 
credited  to  the  Cynics.  The  fact  that,  in  spite  of  their 
protest,  no  genuine  change  seems  to  have  taken  place  in 
public  opinion,  only  deepens  the  tragedy  and  awakens 
our  sympathy  for  men  who  had  challenged  the  traditional 
policy  of  enslavement.  It  is  therefore  right  to  remember 
that  in  some  form  there  was,  at  least  as  early  as  the 
fourth  century,  an  anti-slavery  agitation  in  Greece.  No 
doubt  the  consolations  of  philosophy  are  understood 
only  by  philosophers.  It  is  difficult  to  believe  that  the 
noble  doctrine  of  a  man  like  Zeno,  who  maintained  that 
inne?-  freedom  need  never  be  lost,  could  have  reached 
the  great  labouring  mass  of  men.  Moreover,  the  pro- 
test of  the  later  philosophers  came  far  too  late  for  the 
generations  of  slaves  whose  labour  lay  at  the  foundation 
of  Athenian  greatness.  Even,  again,  if  we  suspect  that 
1  "  Politics,"  I.,  chaps,  v.  and  vi. 


GREECE  199 

Xenophon    was   wrong    in    attributing    to    Socrates    the 
current  view  that  it  was  just  to  enslave  one's  enemies, 
we   cannot   say   that  Socrates   was    opposed    to    slavery. 
He  was  probably  no  more  opposed  to  it  than  Washington. 
It    is    characteristic   of   Greek    thought   that    in   Plato's 
dialogue  "  Euthyphro,"  in   which   Socrates   is  informed 
of  the   murder   of  a   slave,  the   discussion   immediately 
passes  to  abstract  questions.     In  a  modern  dialogue  the 
murder    would    have    formed    the    main    subject.     And 
certainly    it    is    not    easy   to    believe    that    Euthyphro's 
father  had  in  turn  committed  homicide  on  the  murderer 
for  any  other  reason  than  that   the   murderer  had   de- 
stroyed a  piece   of  living   property.      Nevertheless,  the 
fact  that  divergent  views  existed  on  the  duties  of  masters 
towards  slaves  is  a  sign  that  the  Greek  conscience  had 
been  stirred.     In  our   condemnation  of  an  entire  com- 
munity,   we    never    know    how    many    obscure    acts    of 
mercy    have    been    left    unrecorded.      The    Greek,    and 
especially  the  Athenian,  temperament  was  often  vindic- 
tive ;  but,  as  the  people  of  Mitylene  knew,  it  was  also 
generous  and  chivalrous  as  well  as  impulsive.     We  do 
not  know  how  frequently  that   temperament   had   been 
touched  by  the  sorrows  of  slavery,  just   as  we   do  not 
know  how  many  errands  of  mercy  may  be  fulfilled  in 
London  to-night.     The  real  tragedy  of  the  history  of 
slavery  in  Greece,  as  elsewhere,  is  that  the  forces  of  the 
world  proved  once  again   too  strong   for  the  forces   of 
love.      After    all,    eighteen    Christian    centuries    passed 
before  there  was  any  genuine  attempt  to  abolish  slavery. 
There  are,  on  the  other  hand,  signs  of  practical  idealism 
in  ancient  Greece.     The  historian  who,  in  such  a  matter, 
is  afraid  to  talk  with  two  voices  in   case   his   narrative 
may  thereby  appear  to  be  contradictory,  has  never  felt 
that  confusion  of  good  and  evil  of  which  all  history  is 
full.     It  is  rather  his  duty  to  display  the  contradictions, 


200  THE   NEMESIS   OF   NATIONS 

because  they  indicate  the  road  of  advance.  At  least  we 
must  not  attempt  to  break  the  thin-spun  threads  which 
connect  the  conscience  of  the  modern  with  the  conscience 
of  the  ancient  world.  It  is  undeniable,  for  instance, 
that  the  great  tragic  poets  of  Athens  were  aware  of 
the  social  disease  of  the  day.  They  seized  upon  the 
immense  emotional  and  dramatic  value  of  those  pictures 
of  slavery  which  they  presented  to  their  audiences.  For 
every  man,  woman,  and  child  in  the  theatre  might  one 
day  become  a  slave.  Thus  i^schylus,  who  had  fought 
at  Marathon  and  had  actually  witnessed  the  sudden  loss 
of  human  freedom  in  war,  makes  Agamemnon  bid 
Clytemna^stra  deal  gently  with  the  captive  Cassandra — 

"  I  charge  thee 
Give  courteous  welcome  to  this  stranger  maid  ; 
God's  face  inclines  to  him  whose  hand  is  light 
In  victory."  ^ 

It  was  Sophocles,  who  had  been  a  general  in  the  field, 
who  declared  that  although  the  body  is  in  slavery  the 
soul  may  be  free.  And  Euripides,  whose  chorus  is 
frequently  composed  of  captives,  betrays  the  deepest 
sympathy  with  slaves  and  all 

•*  The  simple  nameless  herd  of  Humanity."  ^ 

For  in  Athens,  as  in  Hindustan,  the  first  protest  against 
wrong  came  not  from  the  intellect  but  from  the 
emotions. 

37.  Now,  it  is  important  to  notice  that  this  contra- 
diction in  Greek  opinion  regarding  slavery  was  not  con- 
fined to  the  poets  and  the  philosophers,  but  reappeared 
in  the  theory  and  practice  of  Athenian  law.  For 
although   the  slave  was   not   considered   to  be  a  citizen 

^  Agam.,  949  sqq.  ;  Warr's  translation. 

*  The  Bacchcc^  translated  by  Gilbert  Murray. 


GREECE  20I 

or  even  a  "  person,"  and  was  thus  debarred  from  bearing 
witness  in  the  law  courts,  it  was  nevertheless  often 
found  necessary  to  make  use  of  his  testimony  both  in 
civil  and  in  criminal  cases.  But  his  own  voluntary  con- 
fession was  considered  to  be  valueless.  To  possess  any 
value  at  all  it  would  require  to  be  extracted  from  him 
as  from  an  unwilling  witness.  Hence  he  was  interro- 
gated only  by  torture.  In  many  of  the  reports  of  civil 
suits  which  have  reached  us  the  torture  of  slaves  is  seen 
to  have  been  one  of  the  regular  forms  of  legal  pro- 
cedure. And  that  it  had  become  part  and  parcel  of  the 
entire  Athenian  legal  system  is  proved  by  the  fact  that 
Aristotle  places  it  among  the  most  important  methods 
of  discovering  truth. ^  Whereas  in  Rome,  at  least  from 
the  reign  of  Hadrian,  torture  was  applied  to  slaves  only 
when  they  were  summoned  as  witnesses  in  criminal  cases, 
or  were  themselves  suspected  of  crime,  at  Athens  in  every 
paltry  civil  dispute  the  rack  and  other  forms  of  com- 
pulsion were  used.  Even  the  voluntary  evidence  of  a 
slave  was  rejected.  He  was  not  supposed  to  be  capable 
of  speaking  the  truth.  And  if  his  master,  desirous  of 
sparing  him  so  great  suffering,  refused  to  surrender  him, 
the  fact  was  considered  to  be  strong  proof  that  the 
master  had  something  to  conceal.  In  such  cases  the 
jury  became  prejudiced  and  the  suit  was  lost.  Even 
when  the  torture  cost  the  life  of  the  slave,  his  dying 
cries  were  duly  registered  as  satisfactory  evidence.  Ex- 
perts in  torture  called  Basanistas  conducted  the  examina- 
tion, and  we  hear  of  numerous  instruments  which  remind 
us  of  the  Spanish  Inquisition.  In  the  case  of  the  death 
or  mutilation  of  the  slave,  damages  were  paid  to  the 
master  by  the  party  who  had  demanded  the  slave's  sur- 

^  "'At  5^  pdaavoi  /jiaprvplai  rivis  d<xiv.  "Exei"  ^i  Sokovctl  rb  Ticrrbv,  Sti  ivdyK-q 
Tts  irp6crea-Ti"  {Rhet.,  i.  15,  4).  Later,  however,  he  admits  that  a  man  sub- 
jected to  torture  may  speak  both  truth  and  falsehood. 


202  THE   NEMESIS  OF   NATIONS 

render.  On  the  other  hand,  this  extraordinary  system 
had  its  dangers  even  for  the  slave-owner.  For  a  slave 
enduring  torture  was  often  tempted  to  purchase  im- 
mediate relief  by  making  false  accusations  against  his 
master.  And  the  temptation  was  all  the  greater  since 
in  cases  of  conviction  of  the  master  the  slave  gained  his 
freedom.  We  are  surprised  that  a  society  organised  upon 
such  a  basis  was  able  to  survive  a  single  year.  Almost 
all  actions  at  law  involved  the  torture  of  slaves,  and 
neither  age  nor  sex  brought  exemption.  Some  of  the 
great  civil  orations  of  the  Athenian  orators  were  built 
upon  evidence  extorted  from  the  convulsions  of  slaves. 
Perhaps  no  other  fact  casts  so  strange  a  light  upon  the 
moral  confusion  of  Greek  civilisation.  The  eloquence, 
the  diatribe,  the  skilful  arguments  of  Attic  orators  were 
often  the  occasion  of  scenes  in  which  the  methods  of 
the  witch  trials  of  the  Middle  Ages  seem  to  have  been 
rehearsed. 

38.  Demosthenes,  for  instance,  professed  to  have  the 
strongest  belief  in  evidence  based  upon  the  torture  of 
the  human  body  (eXe^yp^o?  toO  a-cofxaro?).  If  we  turn  to 
his  speech  against  Onetor  we  find  that  he  reminds  the 
judges  that  at  Athens  the  testimony  of  a  tortured  slave 
was  always  considered  to  be  more  valuable  than  the 
voluntary  confessions  of  a  freeman.  Never,  he  says,  was 
there  a  case  in  which  a  slave  suffering  torture  spoke 
falsely.^  Hence  we  are  not  surprised  to  know  that  the 
word  "  martyr  "  is  derived  from  the  Greek  word  for  a 
witness  (/(xu|Oti'?).  We  may,  therefore,  rate  at  its  true 
value  the  boast  of  Demosthenes  that  at  Athens  slaves 
enjoyed  more  freedom  than  the  free  citizens  of  all  other 
countries.^  In  his  speech  against  Midias  he  quotes  a 
remarkable  Athenian  law  to  the  following  effect:  ''If 
any  one  insult  another,  be  that  other  man,  woman,  child, 
1  Onet.,  i.  37.  ^  Third  Philippic,  3. 


GREECE  203 

freeman  or  slave,  or  commit  any  illegal  act  {Trapdvoixov) 
against  any  such,  let  any  Athenian  who  chooses  (being 
under  no  civil  disability)  lodge  his  complaint,"  &c.-^ 
And  then  he  adds  :  "  Listen,  O  Athenians,  to  the 
humanity  of  the  law  which  does  not  suffer  even  slaves 
to  be  insulted."  ^  But  it  is  certainly  difficult  to  admire 
the  "  humanity"  of  a  legal  system  which,  while  it  appears 
to  have  protected  the  slave  from  mere  insult,  actually 
tortured  his  body  for  purposes  of  legal  evidence.  For 
the  law  thus  practised  upon  the  slave  a  far  greater 
outrage.  Moreover,  if  we  turn  to  the  writings  of 
Xenophon  we  shall  discover  the  real  meaning  of  the 
apparent  "humanity"  of  Athenian  law.  Xenophon,  or 
whoever  wrote  the  earlier  *'  Polity  of  the  Athenians," 
likewise  complains  of  the  "  licence "  of  the  slaves  at 
Athens.  He  says  that  there  was  the  most  amazing 
want  of  discipline  among  both  the  slaves  and  the  alien 
immigrants,  and  he  complains  that  a  slave  would  actually 
refuse  to  get  out  of  one's  way  on  the  public  road.  And 
it  was  not  permitted  to  beat  these  insolent  slaves  in 
public.^  But  he  proceeds  to  give  what  cannot  be  re- 
garded as  a  merely  malicious  and  ironical  explana- 
tion. The  reason,  he  says,  why  it  was  forbidden  to 
assault  them  in  the  streets  was  that  a  freeman  might 
be  mistaken  for  a  slave.  For  he  adds  that  neither  in 
dress  nor  in  personal  appearance  could  the  one  be  dis- 
tinguished from  the  other.  But  if  this  is  the  real  mean- 
ing of  the  law  cited  by  Demosthenes,  his  enthusiasm  is  to 
be  explained  by  the  forensic  needs  of  the  moment.* 

39.  We  thus  discover  behind  all  the  glitter  of  Greece 
a  dark  background  of  hate  and  suffering.     To  suppose 

^  Midias,  529.  *  Ibid.,  530. 

^  "Polity  of  the  Athenians,"  i,  10. 

*  Demosthenes  had  been  publicly  insulted  in  the  theatre  by  Midias, 
and  hence  urges  that  if  it  was  illegal  to  assault  a  slave  it  was  surely 
illegal  to  assault  a  citizen. 


204  THE   NEMESIS   OF   NATIONS 

that  wc  know  Athens  when  we  have  read  her  naval  and 
military  history,  or  when  we  have  listened  to  her  orators, 
philosophers,  and  poets,  or  when  we  have  seen  the  remains 
of  her  art,  is  to  suppose  that  we  know  a  building  merely 
because  we  have  examined  the  fagade.  Rather,  it  is  in 
the  damp,  foul  air  of  her  silver  mines  and  in  the  torture 
dungeon  of  her  law  courts  that  we  discover  her  strange 
foundations.  Phidias  sculptured  her  gods  and  her  athletes, 
but  if  he  had  sculptured  one  single  convulsed  figure 
among  her  slaves  we  should  have  seen  in  a  flash  the  dark 
realism  which  lay  beneath  her  grandeur.  Aristotle  extols 
the  body  of  the  Athenian  freeman,  which  was  made  ex- 
quisite and  supple  by  exercise  in  the  gymnasium.  But 
the  slave  was  sent  down  to  the  more  dreadful  gymnasium 
of  the  mines,  and  his  body  was  only  the  corpus  vile  for 
the  grotesque  experiments  of  the  law  courts.  Pindar 
praises  the  Athenians  for  having  laid  "  the  gleaming 
foundations  of  freedom,"  whereas  the  real  foundation  of 
their  State  was  slavery.  And  historians  have  too  often 
seen  Athens  not  from  underneath  but  from  the  top, 
and  have  ignored  the  strange  paradox  of  her  theory  of 
liberty. 

40.  The  liberation  of  slaves  took  place  in  Athens 
practically  in  the  same  manner,  and  generally  for  the 
same  reason,  as  in  Babylon.  The  freedman  was  never 
really  out  of  the  grasp  of  his  former  master,  but  became 
a  "  client."  If  he  gave  offence  or  displayed  ingratitude  he 
was  liable  at  any  moment  to  be  recalled  into  servitude. 
Moreover,  if  he  had  been  branded  he  bore  during  his 
whole  life  an  ineffaceable  stigma.  But  a  clever  slave 
was  often  allowed  to  carry  on  business  in  order  that 
the  master  might  share  the  profits.  In  Greece  there 
was,  further,  a  peculiar  form  of  manumission  which 
consisted  in  dedicating  the  slave  to  a  god.  For  instance, 
the  Delphic  inscriptions  present  us  with  numerous  cases 


GREECE  205 

in  which  slaves  had  been  sold  to  the  Temple  of  Apollo 
at  Delphi,  and  had  been  thereby  declared  to  be  free. 
At  first  sight  it  seems  as  if  the  motive  was  purely 
religious,  and  analogous  to  the  mediaeval  practice  of  royal 
alms  or  royal  pardon  conceded  '*  for  the  sake  of  the 
king's  soul."  But,  according  to  Foucart,  it  was  the  slave 
who  paid  for  his  liberty,  even  although  his  master's  name 
appears  as  the  seller  in  the  contracts.^  It  was  character- 
istic of  the  rigid  logic  of  the  Greeks  that  a  slave  en- 
franchised in  this  manner  was  henceforth  protected  not 
because  he  was  a  freedman,  but  because  he  was  now  the 
property  of  a  god.  Foucart  appears  to  explain  such  cases 
mainly  on  religious  grounds.  It  is  far  more  likely,  how- 
ever, that  the  reasons  were  financial.  For,  on  the  one 
hand,  the  Delphic  priests  discovered  in  the  practice  a 
valuable  means  of  increasing  the  temple's  revenues,  and, 
on  the  other,  the  slave-owners,  by  surrendering  their 
slaves,  gained  the  powerful  patronage  of  the  Oracle.  In 
one  case  the  sum  of  four  minae  was  paid  to  Apollo.^ 
From  the  Delphic  inscriptions  we  also  ascertain  the 
strange  fact  that  men  were  in  slavery  to  the  dead. 
Thus  there  is  a  case  in  which  two  slaves  are  compelled 
to  tend  their  master's  tomb  at  Delphi,  and  are  forbidden 
to  leave  the  district.^  In  other  words,  they  were  practi- 
cally chained  to  his  monument,  so  that  even  the  dead 
were  tyrants.  It  is  certainly  not  necessary  to  deny  that 
many  Greeks  treated  their  slaves  humanely.  Both  as 
individuals  and  as  a  nation  they  frequently  displayed 
generous  impulses.  The  fact  that  slaves  were  often 
buried  in  the  family  tombs,  and  that  affectionate  epitaphs 
were  written  for  them,  is  a  proof  that  intimate  relations, 

^  Memoire^  p.  50. 

2  Inscriptions  Recueillies  d,  Delphes,  No.  73. 

^  Inscriptions,  Nos.  142,  420.  The  sale  to  a  god  has  been  explained 
on  the  ground  that,  since  a  slave  was  incapable  of  being  a  party  to  a 
contract,  there  was  no  other  method  of  emancipating  him. 


2o6  THE   NEMESIS   OF   NATIONS 

had  sometimes  existed  between  them  and  their  masters 
long  before  both  discovered  the  last  level  and  equality  in 
death.  It  is  even  more  remarkable  to  find  that  on  the 
field  of  Marathon  a  special  monument  was  erected  to 
commemorate  those  slaves  who  had  bravely  fallen  in  the 
battle.  But  facts  like  these  only  intensify  the  enigma  of 
a  society  which,  although  it  had  discovered  high  qualities 
in  its  slaves,  was  yet  founded  upon  a  negation  of  their 
rights. 

41.  When  we  consider  not  only  that  the  industries 
of  Athens  were  chiefly  in  the  hands  of  slaves,  but  that, 
as  Xenophon  tells  us,  the  slaves  manned  the  Athenian 
fleet  and  were  liable  to  military  service,  we  are  forced 
to  conclude  that  the  Athenian  Demos  had  become  a 
tyrant,  and  an  idle  tyrant.  For  although  at  the  out- 
break of  the  Peloponnesian  war  some  thirty  thousand 
citizens  took  the  field,  the  national  vigour  had  been 
sapped  during  the  years  of  prosperity.  The  Athenian 
decline  cannot  be  attributed  merely  to  political  and  ex- 
ternal causes,  but  to  inner  wastage.  The  introduction 
of  innumerable  slaves  of  both  sexes  had  ruined  not  only 
the  industry  but  the  homes  of  the  freemen.  It  is  most 
remarkable  that  the  decrease  of  births  among  the  citizens 
became  manifest  precisely  during  the  period  when  Athens 
was  importing  the  greatest  number  of  slaves.  Whereas 
immediately  after  the  Persian  wars  a  rapid  increase  of 
the  free  population  took  place,  during  the  later  phases 
of  the  Peloponnesian  struggle  it  was  found  impossible  to 
make  good  the  losses  in  the  burghers'  ranks.  The  birth- 
rate had  become  stationary,  and  it  remained  stationary 
throughout  the  fourth  century.  Since  for  more  than 
fifty  years  Athens  had  enjoyed  great  prosperity,  this  fall 
in  the  birth-rate  cannot  be  explained  by  supposing  that 
marriage  was  a  luxury  beyond  the  means  of  the  average 
citizen.     The  cause  lay  far  deeper,  and  is  to  be  found 


GREECE  207 

in  those  irregular  relationships  which,  in  Greece  as  in 
Hindustan,  existed  between  the  governing  class  and  the 
slaves.  The  stability  of  the  family  became  seriously 
impaired,  and  the  number  of  freeborn  sons  was  gradually 
diminished.  With  the  slaves  came  luxury  and  idleness 
and  the  atrophy  of  the  ruling  race.  Political  liberty  is 
not  sufficient  to  save  a  State.  In  Athens  it  had  been 
long  ago  obtained,  and  the  later  struggle  for  equality 
had  been  likewise  successful.  The  community  was  now 
divided  into  citizens  and  slaves,  and  the  few  capitalists 
who  remained  possessed  no  political  privileges.  As  in 
France  immediately  after  the  Revolution,  one  citoyen  was 
no  better  than  another,  and  all  were  on  the  same  level. 
Individualism  had  become  lost  in  collectivism.  The 
class  of  free  artisans,  however,  had  been  destroyed  in 
the  competition  with  servile  labour,  and  the  view  became 
popular  that  the  State's  revenue  existed  only  to  be 
divided.  The  co-operation  of  a  large  body  of  citizens  in 
judicial  administration  and  executive  government  helped 
to  intensify  these  communistic  ideas.  The  institution  of 
the  paid  juries  promised  at  least  a  subsistence  to  those 
who  were  without  a  trade,  and  the  declaration  of  the 
lots  was  awaited  with  eagerness.  Six  thousand  of  the 
judges  thus  chosen  were  maintained  by  the  State,  and 
on  the  expiry  of  their  term  of  office  their  places  were 
filled  by  another  six  thousand  upon  whom  the  lot  had 
fallen.  But  these  social  changes  created  a  new  political 
situation.  There  can  be  no  doubt  that  courts  so  con- 
stituted played  a  great  part  in  accelerating  the  catastrophe. 
It  was  dangerous  enough  that  civil  suits  and  criminal 
cases  were  bungled  by  a  host  of  ill-educated  judges,  who 
were  ready  to  listen  to  the  flattery  of  clever  advocates 
or  to  accept  the  bribes  of  unscrupulous  clients;  but  it 
was  still  more  dangerous  when  political  trials  and  im- 
peachments  took    place    before    a    body  of   men    easily 


2o8  THE   NEMESIS   OF   NATIONS 

swayed  by  political  passion.  The  best  intellects  were 
not  tempted  to  take  part  in  such  a  judicial  system,  and 
hence  the  Triobolon  or  judge's  fee  attracted  only  an 
impecunious  majority  before  whom  the  greatest  states- 
man or  general  of  the  day  might  be  arraigned.  But  if 
the  administration  of  justice  was  thus  precarious,  it  can- 
not be  said  that  the  political  affairs  of  the  country  were 
in  safer  hands.  The  Ecclesia  or  assembly  was  composed 
of  all  the  citizens,  and  in  their  corporate  capacity  they 
arrogated  to  themselves  nothing  less  than  infallibility. 
It  is  true  that  their  greatest  man  played  an  important 
part  in  creating  a  policy,  but  in  the  hour  of  crisis  the 
democracy  distrusted  him,  impeached  and  fined  him, 
and  at  last  rejected  his  advice.^  It  is  also  true  that  the 
government  was  partially  centralised  in  the  Council  of 
Five  Hundred,  a  sort  of  Grand  Committee  appointed  for 
the  transaction  of  public  business.  But  it  existed  only 
to  carry  out  the  behests  of  the  assembly.  Moreover, 
its  members  were  chosen  not  by  merit  but  by  lot,  and 
there  was  no  guarantee  of  a  continuity  of  policy.  The 
ten  sub-committees  of  fifty,  who  took  office  by  turns 
throughout  the  year,  constituted  a  pitiful  expedient 
whereby  the  Athenian  jealousy  of  individual  authority  and 
pre-eminence  was  appeased.  A  uniform  diplomacy  did 
not  exist,  because  there  was  practically  no  Foreign  Office. 
Although  it  seems  that  the  generals  were  sometimes 
responsible  for  the  conduct  of  foreign  affairs,  the  fifty 
ministers  of  the  moment  might  intervene  and  prevent 
or  accelerate  action.  Individual  initiative  was  thus  over- 
awed in  the  presence  of  omnipotent  majorities. 

42.  The  Athenians  were  familiar  with  every  form  of 
government,  and  were  restless  under  all  of  them.  After 
the  early  mobile  had  transformed  itself  into  an  immobile 
community,  it  was   destined   to   know  every  phase   of  a 

1  Thuc,  ii.  65. 


GREECE  209 

political  problem  which  is  not  yet  solved.  When  shep- 
herds had  become  husbandmen,  and  husbandmen  had 
become  traders,  the  tribal  communism  had  long  given 
way  to  an  individualism  which  became  symbolised  in  a 
monarchy  tending  to  become  absolute.  But  the  monarchy 
was  checked,  and  at  length  destroyed,  by  an  aristocracy 
which  in  turn  suffered  numerous  transformations,  and  at 
last  gave  way  before  a  democracy.  But  the  democracy 
was  no  more  stable  than  its  predecessors,  and  then  came 
socialism  and  disintegration  and  the  return  to  a  tyranny. 
In  the  extreme  democratic  stage  of  her  political  evolution 
Athens  had  thus  almost  reached  the  point  whence  she 
and  other  Greek  communities  had  started.  But  the 
difference  between  the  earlier  and  the  later  communism 
consisted,  first,  in  the  social  fact  that  in  the  primitive 
period  there  were  no  slaves,  and,  second,  in  the  pohtical 
fact  that  a  system  which  was  adapted  to  a  small  clan 
became  impracticable  when  applied  to  an  artificial  society. 
The  Homeric  Agora  was  an  assembly  easily  controlled, 
but  no  assembly  house  could  have  contained  all  the 
Athenian  citizens  who  were  entitled  to  vote.  Representa- 
tive government  had  not  been  invented,  and  a  clumsy 
political  mechanism  was  expected  to  do  the  work  of  the 
State.  The  theory  underlying  the  Athenian  constitution 
was  that  every  citizen  possessed  a  fraction  of  the  sove- 
reignty, and  that  when  all  the  fractions  were  combined 
in  the  assembly  the  will  of  the  people  became  known. 
But  not  all  the  citizens  dwelt  at  Athens,  and  many 
were  unable  to  attend  the  Ecclesia.  Hence  policy  was 
shaped  by  an  assembly  which  was  not  really  representative, 
A  single  city  exercised  something  like  a  tyranny,  not 
merely  within  but  beyond  the  limits  of  Attica.  And 
so  far  as  it?  own  populace  was  concerned,  the  democratic 
ideal,  which  was  really  socialistic,  had  created  a  mass  of 
human  beings  idly  leaning  upon  each  other   and  upon 

o 


2IO  THE   NEMESIS   OF   NATIONS 

their  slaves,  as  the  joists  and  pillars  of  a  rickety  building 
lean  for  mutual  support  until  the  whole  is  in  a  state  of 
collapse.  The  Athenians  invented  political  co-operation, 
but  they  did  not  discover  how  to  preserve  the  energy, 
the  liberty,  and  the  rights  of  the  individuals  who  agreed 
to  co-operate,  and  they  destroyed  the  rights  of  those 
whose  co-operation  was  never  invited.  When  the  crisis 
came  and  Athens  was  called  upon  to  meet  her  enemies, 
a  mass  of  shifting  and  incoherent  opinion  attempted  to 
conduct  a  war. 

43.  It  has  been  rightly  observed  that  since  all  the 
accounts  which  have  come  down  to  us  regarding  the 
Athenian  democracy  were  written  by  its  enemies,  the 
condemnation  may  be  too  severe.  Nevertheless,  a  social 
and  political  system  must  be  judged  by  its  results,  and 
in  the  case  of  Athens  the  results  were  disastrous  not 
merely  for  the  Athenians  but  for  the  whole  of  Greece. 
No  State  was  ever  so  rapidly  corrupted  by  success. 
Polybius  likens  her  glory  to  a  flash  of  lightning.  The 
courage  which  she  did  display  in  the  war  which  ruined 
her  was  the  inheritance  from  the  earlier  generation,  and 
it  appeared  to  desert  her  after  the  last  of  the  old  guard 
had  fallen.  Plato,  in  a  very  remarkable  passage  in  which 
he  discusses  the  loss  of  the  martial  spirit  which  his  own 
age  witnessed,  attributes  its  cause  to  the  love  of  wealth 
and  ease.^  But  he  does  not  mention  a  deeper  cause, 
which  lay  in  that  system  of  slavery  of  which  he  too  had 
been  an  advocate.  For  it  was  slavery  which  created  the 
ease  and  idleness  of  the  ruling  class.  Comfort  had 
become  an  ideal,  and  the  time  came  when  a  generation 
of  citizens  who  were  not  soldiers  hired  mercenaries  and 
compelled  slaves  to  make  up  an  army.  Athens  was  at 
last  content  only  to  be  a  market,  and  even  her  commer- 
cial supremacy  was  due  not  so  much  to  the  intelligence 

^  "Laws,"  viii.  831. 


GREECE  2 1 1 

of  her  own  people  as  to  the  labour  and  intelligence  of 
her  slaves.  There  was  a  Greek  saying  that  so  greedy 
were  the  Athenians  that  they  died  with  their  hands  open 
as  if  still  expecting  money.  The  day  arrived  when,  as 
we  have  seen,  they  accepted  pay  for  the  trouble  of  attend- 
ing their  own  assembly.  They  clamoured  for  doles  out 
of  the  public  funds,  and  for  free  tickets  for  the  theatre. 
Indeed,  the  entire  State  became  a  theatre,  in  which  a 
spoiled  and  fastidious  audience  called  for  something  new. 
44.  Never,  indeed,  have  internal  and  external  causes 
combined  so  suddenly  for  the  destruction  of  a  State. 
The  Athenians  had  become  the  parasites  of  their  slaves, 
but  it  was  still  more  ominous  that  they  had  become  the 
parasites  of  their  allies.  Aristotle  tells  us  that  more 
than  20,000  citizens — in  other  words,  almost  the 
entire  free  adult  male  community — were  supported  by 
the  tribute  of  the  allies.  "  In  this  way,"  he  says,  *'  they 
earned  their  living."  ^  Thus  the  causes  which  were 
wrecking  Athens  from  within  were  really  the  same  causes 
which  were  threatening  to  wreck  her  from  without ; 
and  she  was  like  a  human  being  who,  although  suffering 
from  inward  disease,  is  placed  in  the  least  favourable 
environment.  A  mass  of  discontent  had  developed 
within  her  own  walls,  and  was  now  developing  within 
the  communities  which  recognised  her  sovereignty.  The 
attitude  which  she  had  assumed  towards  her  slaves 
was  the  same  attitude  which  she  displayed  towards 
her  allies  and  her  enemies  in  Hellas.  According  to 
Aristotle,  "  the  Athenians  began  to  treat  their  allies 
in  a  more  imperious  fashion."^  It  must  not  be  for- 
gotten, however,  that  the  Delian  federation  of  which 
Athens  was  the  leader  was  a  loose  union  of  oligarchies 
and  democracies,  and  that  it  was  her  task  to  discover 

^  "Athenian  Constitution,"  25.     "'H  jjAv  odv  rpocpr)  t<^  S-^fK^i  5td  to^tuv 
4ylyveTo."  ^  Ibid.,  24, 


/ 


212  THE   NEMESIS  OF   NATIONS 

a    common    policy.     Originally    that    policy    had    con- 
sisted  in   the   defence   of   Hellas   against    the   Persians, 
and  since  Athens  almost  single-handed  had  vanquished 
the  enemy,  the  leadership  of  the  league  was  hers  by  right. 
Now,  the  oligarchies  were  justly  suspected  of  betraying 
the  cause  of  Hellas,  whereas  the  democracies  remained 
true  to  Athens  and  to  the  common  duty.^      Hence  the 
Athenians  were  tempted  to  encourage  the  democracies 
at   the    expense    of  the   oligarchies.      Like  the   French 
Revolutionists    they    indulged    in    a     propaganda,    and 
every  State  which  had  not  reached  the  same  democratic 
stage  of  development   was   regarded  as  an  enemy.     At 
most,  the  oligarchies  were  only  tolerated.      The   situa- 
tion was  delicate  and  dangerous,  especially  since  all  the 
allies  were  compelled  to  pay  an  annual  tribute  which  the 
Athenians  disposed  of  as  it  pleased  them.     Athens  was 
charged    with    using    it   for    her    own    aggrandisement." 
She   sent   tax-gatherers    through   the   States,  and   some- 
times   placed    garrisons    to   enforce    her    rights.       Her 
squadrons  patrolled  the  sea,   which  she  had   practically 
annexed.     Moreover,  the  allies  were  compelled  to  have 
not  only  their  political  disputes  settled  in  the  Athenian 
courts,   but   their   civil   cases  as  well,  so   that  Athenian 
law  was  made  to  override  the  law  of  the  different  com- 
munities.     Whereas   this   system  was   indispensable   for 
the  settlement   of  the   public    policy  of   the    league,   it 
became  intolerable  when  applied  to  the  private  concerns 
of  the  allies.     Even  Pericles  admitted  with  a  wince  that 
the  Athenians  had  become  despots.     "  For  now,"  he  said, 
"  you  are  tyrants  :  the  world  thinks  it  was  wrong  to  seize 
the   tyranny,  but   it   would  be   dangerous   to   surrender 

^  Oncken,  ii.  p.  115. 

«  "Im  Gegentheil,  wenigstens  die  bemittelten  Athenischen  Burger 
haben  auch  finanziell  unvergleichlich  hohere  Opfer  gebracht"  (Wila- 
mowitz-M Ollendorff,  Aus  Kydathen,  p.  27). 


GREECE  213 

it."  ^  But  it  was  a  tyranny  on  the  top  of  other  tyran- 
nies. When  we  remember  that  the  allied  States  like- 
wise possessed  slaves,  who  were  the  chief  instruments 
in  creating  the  yearly  tribute  which  Athens  consumed, 
we  are  not  surprised  that  an  empire  so  artificially 
organised  was  near  its  collapse. 

45.  When,  therefore,  those  who  had  once  been  the  allies 
and  those  who  had  always  been  the  enemies  of  Athens  at 
last  combined  for  her  destruction,  we  are  presented  with 
a  very  dramatic  spectacle.  For  the  Athenians,  who  at 
that  moment  were  among  the  greatest  slave-owners  of 
Greece,  were  now  fighting  in  order  to  prevent  themselves 
from  falling  into  slavery.  From  our  present  point  of 
view  this  is  the  real  interest  of  the  Peloponnesian  war 
(431  B.C.).  It  is  clear  that  the  people  had  become  aware 
that  they  were  now  in  the  predicament  of  their  own 
slaves,  because  Pericles  attempted  to  divert  their  thoughts 
from  that  fact  by  insisting  on  the  larger  issue,  the  main- 
tenance of  the  empire.^  Within  those  walls  of  Athens 
thousands  of  slaves  had  been  struggling  for  freedom 
during  generations  of  tyranny.  But  the  Furies  were  now 
awake.  As  we  have  seen,  not  the  least  ironical  fact  in 
the  history  of  Athens  is  that  there  was  a  Temple  of 
Nemesis  with  "  a  lordly  portal "  in  Sunium,  not  far  from 
the  silver  mines  of  Laurion,  where  the  slaves  were  work- 
ing in  chains.  And,  as  if  to  vindicate  her  name,  it  was 
with  slavery  that  the  free  Athenians  were  threatened. 
Their  greatest  thinker  had  said  "  it  was  just  to  enslave 
one's  enemies,"  but  now  Greeks  were  enemies  of  Greeks. 
We  cannot,  however,  trace  the  changing  fortunes  of  a 
struggle  in  which  not  merely  Athens  but  all  Hellas 
was  weakened  and  made  ready  for  the  invader.  But 
we  must  notice  how  Athenian  pride  was  humbled  when, 

1  "  u)s  TvpavviSa  yap  tjSt]  ^x^'''^  aiiT-f}v,  ^v  Xa^eiv  fikv  &diKov  SoKei  ehai.,  d,<pe1vai  5k 
iiriKlvSvvov"  (Thuc,  ii.  63).  *  Ibid.,  ii.  63. 


2  14  THE   NEMESIS  OF   NATIONS 

for  instance,  the  Samians  with  a  kind  of  malignant 
ingenuity  branded  the  freeborn  Athenians  whom  they 
captured  as  slaves  with  the  stamp  of  the  coat  of  arms 
of  Athens.  And  we  hear  that  after  the  disaster  at  Syra- 
cuse hundreds  of  Athenians  were  branded  on  the  forehead 
with  the  figure  of  a  horse  before  they  were  thrown  into 
the  quarries,  where  the  forced  labour  was  even  more 
terrible  than  in  their  own  silver  mines. 

46.  States,  like  individuals,  appear  to  suffer  from  a 
kind  of  haemorrhage,  and  Greece  opened  her  own  veins. 
The  moment  of  her  exhaustion  was  the  opportunity  of 
the  northern  invader.  Every  Greek  State  had  reached,  for 
the  same  reason,  the  same  stage  of  decay.  Thus  when 
the  leadership  had  passed  from  Athens  it  was  held  only 
for  a  short  time  by  Sparta  and  by  Thebes.  It  was  when 
Philip  of  Macedon  saw  that  Greeks  had  ceased  to  fight 
for  Greeks  that  he  began  that  series  of  aggressions  which 
ended  in  the  subjugation  of  the  entire  Hellenic  race. 
Less  than  one  hundred  and  fifty  years  had  passed  since 
the  battle  of  Marathon,  and  already  the  foundations  of 
Greece  were  loose  and  trembling.  Athens,  for  instance, 
began  to  offer  her  enemies  not  fight  but  parley,  and  great 
orators  took  the  place  of  great  soldiers.  The  navy  had 
perished.  A  sense  of  helplessness  fell  upon  a  race 
which  had  wasted  itself  in  internecine  conflict.  But 
the  wealth  which  they  had  accumulated  attracted  their 
enemies,  and  Athens  because  of  her  art  became  a  special 
object  of  plunder  and  sack.  For  there  was  already  in 
operation  that  series  of  destructive  causes  which  at  last 
transformed  Hellas  into  a  Roman  province,  and  Athens 
into  a  provincial  town  of  the  Roman  Empire. 

47.  The  ethics  of  Athenian  history  are  strangely 
confused,  for  the  moral  ideas  expressed  in  the  theories  of 
her  thinkers  are  in  violent  contradiction  with  the  theory 
and  practice  of  the  State.    The  Athenians  possessed  words 


GREECE  2 I 5 

for  Liberty,  Equality,  and  even  for  Fraternity,  but  all 
those  great  doctrines  were  evolved  at  the  expense  of 
slaves.  The  political  struggle  was,  therefore,  artificial 
and  insincere.  It  has  been  said  by  a  great  scholar  that 
many  writers  foolishly  write  of  Athens  as  if  it  were  a 
Lost  Paradise.  The  truth  is  that  behind  her  fa9ade  we 
discover  an  industrial  tyranny  and  workshops  full  of 
slaves.  When  it  is  remembered  that  without  their 
labour  the  leisure  which  went  to  create  Athenian  art, 
literature,  and  philosophy  would  not  have  been  possible, 
we  cannot  resist  the  conclusion  that  the  culture  of 
Athens  was  bought  at  too  high  a  price.  Greek  ethics 
are  full  of  elaborate  discussions  about  justice,  but  no 
amount  of  casuistry  will  convince  us  that  the  treatment 
of  Athenian  slaves  was  just. 


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CHAPTER   V 

ROME 

Perhaps  nothing  illustrates  so  impressively  the  rise  and 
the  fall  of  States  as  the  history  of  naval  power  on  the 
Mediterranean.  For  that  sea  was  named  and  renamed  in 
accordance  with  national  pride  by  the  different  nations 
whose  navies  became  successively  omnipotent  upon  it. 
Carians,  Cretans,  Egyptians,  Etruscans,  Phoenicians,  and 
Carthaginians  had  all  regarded  it  as  a  national  possession 
and  their  special  highway.  After  Salamis,  which  was  the 
Trafalgar  of  Greece,  the  Greeks  might  well  call  the 
Mediterranean  *'  the  Greek  sea."  Long  before  that  date, 
however,  Greeks  had  found  their  way  seawards  and  west- 
wards, because,  as  we  saw,  a  Greek  outpost  about  the 
close  of  the  seventh  century  had  appeared  at  Marseilles. 
Even  the  Italian  gulfs,  such  as  the  Adriatic  and  the 
Tyrrhene  Sea,  had  received  their  Greek  names  before  any 
Roman  boat  was  built.  Yet  one  by  one  these  naval 
nations  had  passed  away  like  the  shadows  once  cast  by 
the  sails  of  their  ships,  and  at  length  the  Romans  in 
their  turn  renamed  the  Mediterranean  "  our  sea,"  jnare 
nostrum. 

2.  Now,  this  maritime  hegemony  which  had  been 
seized  by  one  hostile  power  after  another  was  the  means 
of  the  extension  of  civilisation  along  the  southern  shores 
of  Europe  to  Italy,  Spain,  and  Britain.  The  gradual 
abandonment  of  the  term  *' inner  sea"  for  the  Mediter- 
ranean is  a  sign  that   sailors  had   become  familiar  with 


ROME  219 

that  *'  outer  sea "  which  was  believed  to  surround  the 
world.  The  word  "  Mediterranean  "  was  not  used  until 
the  third  century  before  Christ.  Early  navigators  moved 
cautiously  from  cape  to  cape,  and  at  first  never  ventured 
towards  a  horizon  where  no  land  was  visible.  There  is 
evidence  that  they  long  feared  the  sea,  and  perhaps  those 
scholars  are  correct  who  detect  signs  of  this  fear  in  one  of 
the  Greek  words,  OdXacra-a.  It  used  to  be  supposed  that 
that  word  contained  the  root  for  "  salt."  But  a  primitive 
people,  when  they  saw  the  sea,  were  at  first  ignorant  that 
it  was  salt,  and  it  is  more  probable  that  they  were  im- 
pressed by  its  dynamic  aspect.  They  would  either  imitate 
its  sound  in  such  a  word  as  Thalassa^  or  attribute  to  it 
that  "  motion,"  "  agitation,"  even  "menace  "  and  "  terror," 
which  belong  to  the  sea.^  Many  primitive  words  betray 
a  deep,  although  perhaps  unconscious,  poetry  in  their 
seizure  of  the  characteristics  of  things.  Thus  perhaps 
the  name  of  the  Greek  sea  god  Poseidon  is,  as  Plato 
suggests,  connected  with  the  word  to  "shake,"  for  he 
was  the  "  earth  shaker."  ^  That  name  must  have  been 
given  by  men  who  had  felt  the  vibration  of  the  shore  as 
the  waves  struck  it.  And,  indeed,  another  Greek  name 
for  the  sea,  TreXayo?,  means  the  "striker."^  It  was  only 
for  skilful  Greek  mariners  that  the  sea  became,  what 
Homer  sometimes  calls  it,  "  the  briny,"  or,  as  it  was  still 
otherwise  named,  'K6vro<;^  a  highway.  The  Romans,  who 
were  essentially  landsmen  and  more  cautious  than  the 
Greeks,  were  slower  to  learn  seamanship,  and,  in  spite  of 
some  later  naval  victories,  were  never  really  at  home  on 

^  Tapda-aa,  Sanskrit  targ.     Curtius,  ii.  90 ;  Vani^ek,  302. 

2  Cratylus,  403.  Herodotus  (vii.  129)  describes  Poseidon  as  the 
cause  of  earthquakes.  Fick  ( Vergl  Worterbuch  der  Indogennanischen 
Sprachen,  i.  507)  suggests  that  _"  Poseidon,"  as  "  lord  of  waves,"  is 
derived  from  hoti,  Lat.  potis,  and  olZ^i.a,  the  swell  of  the  ocean, 

^  Sanskrit  plag.  Another  derivation,  however,  connects  -rreXayos 
with  TrXd^,  flat. 


220  THE   NEMESIS   OF   NATIONS 

the  sea.  Their  word  for  it,  mare^  is,  if  the  opinion  of 
some  scholars  be  correct,  likewise  significant  of  the  kind 
of  awe  with  which  men  first  looked  on  the  sea.  For 
mare  is  believed  to  be  only  a  form  of  jnors^  death.^  The 
Romans,  indeed,  appear  to  have  had  little  confidence  in 
their  sea  god,  Neptune,  whose  name,  besides  many  of 
their  nautical  terms,  came  from  Greece.  Even  in  the 
height  of  her  greatness  Rome  frequently  neglected  sea 
power,  and,  according  to  Polybius,  slaves  and  the  riff- 
raff formed  the  majority  of  her  sailors.  The  coasts  of 
Italy  and  the  entire  Mediterranean  had  been  explored  by 
alien  seamen  long  before  Rome  had  launched  a  ship  or 
Romans  had  learned  to  use  an  oar.  No  doubt  a  ship's 
prow  figures  on  her  most  ancient  coins,  and  as  early  as 
394  B.C.  she  sent  a  sacred  ship  to  Delphi.  But  it  was 
by  men  from  the  east  that  the  way  thither  and  the  means 
of  reaching  it  had  first  been  shown  to  her.  Although  her 
political  strength  came  originally  from  the  north,  a  great 
part  of  her  civilisation  and  the  stimulus  which  at  last 
goaded  her  to  conquest  came  from  the  south  and  the  sea. 
3.  It  was  early  that  history  began  to  cast  her  nets  round 
the  shores  of  Europe.  In  600  b.c.  Italy  was  perhaps  still 
called  Hesperia,  the  Evening  Land.  The  west,  in  which 
Homer  had  seen  the  golden  sunset,  seemed  to  men  of 
that  age  to  be  the  final  Eldorado.  But  sailors'  tales  of 
its  unreaped  riches  had  reached  the  eastern  Mediter- 
ranean so  early  that  Phoenicians,  before  11 00  B.C.,  had 
sailed  past  Italy,  and  had  found  silver  in  Spain  and  tin  in 
the  far-off  island  of  Britain.  There  is  a  certain  fascination 
in  imagining  ourselves  back  in  an  era  in  which  Europe, 
whose  roads  are  now  all  carefully  mapped — Europe,  whose 
fields  have  been  sown  and  ploughed  and  reaped  for  ages — 
lay  mapless  and  full  of  mystery,  and  excited  men's  minds 

*  Weise,  Die  Griechischen  Worter  im  Laiei?t,  p.  209  ;  Curtius,  i.  401  ; 
Vanii^ek,  p.  708. 


ROME  221 

with  the  hope  of  gold.  Adventurers  set  sail  for  her 
coasts  in  the  same  spirit  in  which  Cortes  and  Pizarro 
sailed  for  Mexico  and  Peru.  Phoemciaplajited  Carthage 
as  a  great  outpost  and  naval  base  for  tHF  western 
Mediterranean.  "'  TAirope^^garT'lo" 'stretch  her  arms 
towardsAfnca,  as  she  still  stretches  them  to-day,  and 
Sicily,  lying  midway,  became  a  battlefield.  It  is,  indeed, 
this  change  of  the  battle-ground  which  strikes  us  in  the 
opening  of  European  history.  In  due  time,  no  doubt, 
Rome  sought  out  again  the  old  battlefield  in  the  East. 
It  was  part  of  her  ruthless  mission  to  bring  Asia,  Africa, 
and  Europe  into  that  triple  contact  which  is  to  become 
even  still  closer  than  it  is  to-day.  Just  as  the  eyes 
of  the  modern  world  are  turning  rather  to  the  Pacific 
than  to  the  Atlantic,  so,  after  the  Greeks  had  destroyed 
the  Persian  fleet  off  the  eastern  shores  of  Europe, 
men  became  aware  that  a  new  era  had  already  begun. 
The  maritime  race  along  the  southern  and  the  western 
coasts  of  Europe  became  keener,  and  the  goals  were 
extended.  Presently  Romans  and  Carthaginians  would 
meet  in  Spain,  Britain  would  become  a  prize,  and  bold 
seamen  would  sail  over  the  German  Ocean  to  the  shores 
of  the  Baltic  in  search  of  amber.  The  islands  acted 
like  magnets  and  drew  them  from  coast  to  coast.  Elba, 
which  was  rich  in  co£per,  although  first  explored Tiid 
n'amed  "trva  "byt^Tglirians,  i  people  from  the  mainland, 
was  early  re-explored  and  was  renamed  by  the  Greeks 
iEthalia,  island  of  smoke  and  flame.  At  first  it  was  not 
believed  that  Italy  belonged  to  the  mainland  at  all. 
Geography  was  felt  to  be  full  of  that  romance  which  it 
has  not  yet  altogether  lost.  Both  to  Homer  and  to 
Hesiod  Italy  was  an  island,  and  a  "  holy  island."  For  it 
was  understood  that  there  the  haunts  of  gods  and  heroes 
might  be  visited,  and  the  actual  mouth  of  hell  be  seen. 
Every  isle,  indeed,  was  an  isle  of  the  sirens.     There  had 


222  THE   NEMESIS   OF  NATIONS 

been  rumours  of  a  strange  land  where  sea  and  fire  were 
mingled.  It  is  good  to  imagine  the  awe  with  which 
sailors,  for  whom  every  natural  fact  had  a  supernatural 
meaning,  first  observed  smoke  and  flame  rising  from 
the  snows  of  Etna,  or  passed  the  restless  shore  of  Strom- 
boli.  Those  were  the  men  who  gave  the  name  of  their 
god  of  metal  and  fire,  Hephaistos,  to  one  of  the  volcanic 
islands  lying  off  Sicily,  for  they  thought  that  his  forge 
might  actually  be  heard  clanging  over  the  sea.  Sicily, 
too,  was  believed  to  be  his  workshop,  and  the  entire 
southern  coast  of  Italy  his  hot  hearth.  There  the  land- 
scape betrayed  signs  of  so  great  volcanic  labour,  and 
combined  so  much  beauty  with  so  much  desolation,  that 
it  was  conceived  to  be  nothing  less  than  an  advanced 
portion  of  the  scenery  of  the  under-world.  For  those 
men,  when  they  brought  their  trade  and  traffic  to  Europe, 
brought  also  the  merchandise  of  old  romance. 

4.  It  comes  as  a  surprise  that  the  most  authentic  date 
in  early  Italian  history  marks  the  foundation  not  of 
Rome  but  of  such  Greek  cities  as  Sybaris,  Croton,  and 
Tarentum  (721-700 'iTciy  ^WliUe  tfie~intantJlatin 
communities  wefe~Stnn turning  restlessly  in  their  cradle 
of  the  Alban  Hills,  a  fringe  of  foreign  cities  surrounded 
the  south-eastern,  the  southern,  and  the  south-western 
coasts  of  Italy.  It  was  the  overcrowding  of  Greece  which 
led  adventurous  Greeks  over  a  hazardous  sea,  and  com- 
pelled them  to  settle  in  a  land  which  they  called  Fitalia, 
the  land  of  oxen.  They  knew  it  also  as  Oinotria,  the 
land  of  wine.  Those  ambitious  colonists,  who  thus 
linked  the  history  of  Greece  with  the  history  of  Italy, 
dreamed  of  a  new  western  Hellenic  Empire,  because  they 
gave  the  name  of  Great  Greece  to  the  southern  parts 
of  the  Italian  peninsula.  Older  even  than  Tarentum 
or  Sybaris  was  the  Ionic  city  oTXAim^T^bich  'WJS~^uilt 
perhaps Ts  early  as  iooD^^'.^r    That  those'Xjreek' colonies 


\v^   ^ 


ROME  223 

in  the  west  were  of  ancient  date  is  proved  by  the  fact 
that  they  had  time  long  before  Rome  became  politically 
important  to  plant  daughter  cities  in  the  Italian  land. 
Thus  Cumae  gave  birth  to  Parthenope  and  to  Neapolis 
(Naples),  and  Sybaris  was  the  mother  of  Poseidonia 
(Passtum),  which  she  dedicated  to  Poseidon,  who,  as 
those  colonists  believed,  had  brought  the  Achaeans  safely 
from  the  shores  of  Greece.  News  of  the  splendour  of 
their  cities  had  reached  the  Latin  burghers,  who,  in  their 
fortified  hill  villages,  were  more  or  less  isolated  from  the 
vivid  life  which  had  sprung  up  on  the  seacoast.  Indeed, 
in  the  eyes  of  the  Greek  settlers  the  landsmen  were 
probably  barbarians.  Sybaris,  for  instance,  rapidly  passed 
through  the  whole  cycle  of  vanity  and  became  a  byword. 
She  and  other  opulent  cities,  Etruscan  as  well  as  Greek, 
had  seized  the  main  commerce  of  Italy,  and  all  the  inland 
communities  were  shut  out  from  the  maritime  traffic. 
Capua,  the  capital  of  Campania  and  the  home  of  the 
gladiators,  if  originally  an  Italian  or  an  Etruscan  city, 
became  early  and  deeply  Hellenised.  Her  fashionable 
street,  the  Seplasia,  was  full  of  shops  in  which  the  per- 
fumes and  the  fabrics  of  the  East  were  bought.  So  con- 
tagious was  her  luxury  that  when  the  Samintes  conquered 
her  in  424  B.C.,  although  they  belonged  to  the  most 
incorruptible  of  Latin  stocks,  they  became  thoroughly 
corrupted.  Thus  at  the  opening^f^oman  history  we 
find  that  the  mosf^sxTdtherfT^art  of  the  Pehtnsula  was 
not  merdyTTeirenised  but  Orientalised,  arid  already 
satiated.  Just  as  many  towns  in  the  Galley  ^F^e 
Euphrates  rose  and  fell  before  Babylon  rose  over  them 
all,  so  in  Italy  many  brief  and  futile  cities  grew  great 
and  grew  weak  before  Rome  was  audacious  enough  to 
declare  herself  eternal.^  For  although  some  of  them, 
like  Tarentum,  played  a  more  prolonged  and  substantial 

^  "  In  aeternum  urbe  condita  "  (Livy,  iv.  4). 


224  THE   NEMESIS  OF   NATIONS 

part  in  Italian  history,  most  of  them  only  glittered  for 
a  few  centuries  in  a  brilliant  but  brittle  southern  fa9ade 
which  was  one  day  to  be  destroyed  by  Rome. 

5.  The  fact__Lliat  some  of  thostjjGreek  cities  of  Italy 
issuedA^okLiiQiliagfiLi mp lies_th a t  t hey  must  havTenj oyed 
a  wide  commercial  credit.  But^. likewise,  the  fact  that 
many  fraudulent  coins  belonging  to  that  age  have  been 
discovered — inferior  pieces  of_metal  with  a  thin  veneer 
of  silver — -imparts  jLCufTouS-inQderiiity  of  corruption  to 
their^^yajiishej^idyilis^jtions.  The  maritime  "cities  were 
n7)t  merely  ports  of  call  for  Greek  and  Phoenician  ships, 
but  they  were  also  emporia  for  native  manufactures. 
Thus  Tarentum  in  Calabria  grew  rich  by  means  of  the 
purple  fishery  and  the  manufacture  of  wool.  The  Greek 
sailors,  in  fact,  had  tracked  the  murex  from  the  i^Lgean 
to  the  shores  of  Italy,  and  doubtless  the  first  Greek 
settlements  were  only  fishing-stations.  But  the  day 
came  when  ^he  wool  of  Tarentum  dyed  with  Taren- 
tine  purple  began  to  rival  the  stuffs  of  TyreJ  This  love 
of  scarlet  and  purple  appears  to  have  been  widely  spread 
among  ancient  peoples.  In  Sybaris  a  law  was  passed 
which  exempted  from  all  taxes  those  who  manufactured 
or  imported  the  purple.  We  are  told  that  even  the 
children  wore  little  purple  robes,  and  that  their  curls 
were  braided  with  gold.  Sybaris  appears  to  have  been 
a  bright,  shining,  amazing  city.  The  cavalry  wore  saf- 
fron tunics  over  their  breastplates.  Nowhere  could  more 
gorgeous  processions  be  witnessed.  The  public  baths 
were  famous.  The  roads  which  led  from  the  city  to 
the  villas  in  the  country  were  covered  by  awnings  to 
protect  wayfarers  and  grandees  from  the  sun.  And  the 
rich  Sybarites  possessed  wine-cellars  built  on  the  sea- 
shore in  order  that  their  wine  might  be  kept  cool.  It 
was  a  people  gone  somewhat  mad  on  luxury,  but^the 
climate  was  probably  the  cause  Q^  their  strangecoUective^ 


^^^fy^-^^^  '  ROME  225 

neurosis    and    bizarre    exciternenL      The    city    lay   in    a 
hallow  in~a"Tan3~oF  Fevef^  and  although  even  in  summer 
the  nights  were  cold,  at  noon  the  heat  was  intolerable. 
A  visitor  to  the  desolate  landscape  to-day  becomes  aware 
of   a    sinister   atmosphere.     The  soil    looks   sullen    and 
strange,  as  if  conscious  of  its  own  volcanic  and  destruc- 
tive power.     It  was  a  proverb  among  the  Sybarites  that 
no  prudent  man  ever  saw  sunset  or  sunrise.    We  may  be 
sure  that  the  300,000  citizens — if  that  was  really  their 
census — were  served   by  at  least  double  the  number  of 
slaves.     For  the  Greeks  had  brought  to  Italy  that  horror 
of  mechanical  labour  which,  they  supposed,  constituted 
part  of  their  dignity.     There  is  a  story  that  a  Sybarite, 
after  he  had  watched  some  husbandmen  digging  in  the 
fields,   exclaimed   that    the   mere   sight   made   his   bones 
ache.     And  we  hear   of  another  who  was  not  ashamed 
to  be  seen  flogging  a  fugitive  slave  who  had  taken  refuge 
at  the  altar  of  a  god.     In  fact,  the  entire  social  history 
of  Greece  was  being   reproduced,   and   the  entire  social 
history  of  Rome  was  being  rehearsed  by  those  sumptuous 
cities  which  were  fixed  like  parasites  on  the  soil  of  Italy. 
Had    there   been   any   contemporary   statesman    to   note 
down  the  brief  biography  of  their  follies,  his  work  might 
later  have  been  used  as  a  warning  to  the  statesmen  of 
Rome.     For  the  end  of  their  miniature  tyrannies  fore- 
shadowed the  end  which  likewise  awaited  her  immense 
and  more  terrible  dominion. 

6.  The  Greeks  brought  to  Italy  the  same  political 
unrest  which  prevented  the  national  cohesion  of  the 
mother-country.  Their  cities  became  the  scene  of  that 
kind  of  public  fury  which  was  specially  Greek.  It  was 
not  merely  that  in  all  of  them  passionate  oligarchies  and 
passionate  democracies  wrecked  every  municipal  structure 
which  was  raised,  but  that  in  due  time  city  became  leagued 
against  city.     It  seemed  as  if  they  had  come  to  Italy  to 

p 


226  THE   NEMESIS   OF   NATIONS 

prolong  hereditar)'  hate.  At  the  moment  when  Athens 
was  driving  out  her  tyrants,  Croton  was  destroying 
Sybaris,  and  was  so  bent  upon  its  utter  destruction  that 
the  river  Crathis,  once  dear  to  Sybarites,  was  diverted 
from  its  channel  and  made  to  flow  over  the  ruins. 
These  reckless  communities  had  thus  brought  westwards 
numerous  political  problems  which  have  continued  to 
disturb  Western  civilisation.  And  yet,  as  if  to  prove 
the  fundamental  monotony  of  the  political  history  of 
mankind,  the  same  kind  of  problems  were  already  agitat- 
ing the  rising  city  on  the  Tiber.  Recent  investigations 
have,  indeed,  discredited  the  authenticity  of  early  Roman 
history  ;  but  at  least  it  is  certain  that  in  Rome,  as  in 
Athens,  we  stumble  very  early  upon  a  social  crisis.  In 
the  mere  effort  at  social  union  lay  the  causes  of  im- 
mediate disorder.  The  seven  kings  of  Rome,  and  such 
personages  as  Coriolanus,  Junius  Brutus,  and  Cincinnatus, 
once  considered  to  be  real,  are  now  believed  by  some 
modern  sceptics  to  be  only  legendary.^  It  would  be 
foolish  to  deny,  however,  that  behind  their  names  lay 
great  political  events.  It  is  certain  that  Rome  had 
undergone  the  same  kind  of  social  evolution  as  Athens, 
fit  may,  of  course,  be  a  too  remarkable  coincidence  that 
the  Romans  are  made  to  drive  out  their  tyrants  almost 
at  the  same  date  as  the  Athenians  drove  out  theirs 
(510-509  B.C.),  and  there  can  be  no  doubt  that  early 
Roman  historians  wrote  under  Greek  influence.  Political 
events  were  antedated,  and_sometimes,  in_order  to  flStter^ 
cqntemporaryjtatesmen,  their  families  were  made  to  play 
great^artTlntKe^rlier  national  life.  Nevertheless,  the 
polTticaFand  social  problems  of  early  Itome  cannot  have 
been  diff^erent  from  the  problems  which  troubled  the 
Greek  colonies  and  their  mother-cities.  Athens  and 
Rome  were   familiar  with   the  same   intestinal   disorder, 

*  Pais,  Storia  di  Roma^  i.  491  sqq. 


ROME  227 

and  reached  the  same  stage  of  political  disillusion,  long 
before  they  came  into  official  contact.  The  earliest 
conflicts  within  both  States  arose  out  of  theiF  agrarian 
systenis^  Although_Cjyy~lnay^]iometiiiies  "pr^nT"!!? 
with,  fiction  instead  of  fact,  no  one  can  dispute  his  sfate- 
ment  that  in  Rome^^ny  proposal  regardingTanJ^never 
fa i  1  ed~tcntifow~dTe  entire"^rate~TtTto~convulsions.^  The 
agrarian  probTemlias  been  the  great  problem  of  history. 
As  we  have  already  seen,  and  as  perhaps  we  shall  see  still 
more  clearly  in  the  case  of  Rome,  it  was  entangjed  in 
ancient  times  with  the  still  vaster  ^o^tem  ot  servile 
labour,  Tnn^iTre  the  abuse  of  property  inlan?t~iaTri-the- 
abuse~or~pro'pertyTn  slaves^ere-the  two  most  aggravated 
formrT»f  her  economic  and~"sociat  "disease,  "and:  theyjvere 
th'e^hief  factors  irTHer  ultimate  catastropKeT    Moreover, 

tKose  two  Actors  tHroughouFTier  entire  history  worked 

closely  together.  It  was  the^uHnTturaTaccumuIatTon  of 
property,  and  especially  of  agricultural  property  in  private^ 
hands,  thaT caused  a.  d^marrd~foFsTave  labour  which  finds 
no  parallel  even  in  the  history  of  Babyloru  But  it  cannot 
be  said  that  those  causes  of  ruin  became  active  only 
during  the  Empire.  They  had  been  active  from  the 
beginning.  The  Empire  was  the  heir  of  the  Republic, 
and  the  Republic  had  been  the  heir  of  the  Kingship,  and 
the  Kingship  had  been  only  the  symbol  of  a  community 
determined  upon  union.  The  history  of  the  later  mag- 
nified State  was  already  foreshadowed  in  the  voracious 
little  community  which,  fixed  almost  in  the  centre  of 
Italy,  steadily  consumed  the  entire  Peninsula  before  it 
began  to  consume  the  world.  It  is  generally  supposed 
that  the  city  was  founded  about  753  B.C.  But  it  was 
founded  only  to  become  the  scene  of  incessant  strife. 
The  young  community  early  began  to  vibrate  with  the 

*  "Turn  primum  (486  B.C.)  lex  agrraria  promulgata  est;  nunquam  deinde 
usque  ad  banc  memoriam  sine  maximis  motibus  rerum  agitata"  (xxiv.  41). 


228  THE   NEMESIS   OF   NATIONS 

intensest  emotion.     The  monarchy  appears  to  have  lasted 
during  two  hundred  and  forty-four  years,^  but  its  over- 
throw was  only  the  beginning  of  centuries  of  struggle. 
It  was  not  merely  that  a  great  conflict  raged  round  the 
tenure   of   land.     Other  questions   affecting    elementary 
human   rights  soon   began   to   agitate   the    people.     We 
hear,   for   example,   of   one   of   their    leaders,   a   certain 
C.    Terentillus    Arsa,    who    declaimed    during    "  several 
days "   against    the  insolence   of   the   patricians,   and   of 
another,  Appius  Herdonius,  who  summoned   the   slaves 
to  freedom  "  in  order  that  he  might  break  the  intolerable 
yoke  of  their  slavery."     As  a  proof  of  the  fearful  dis- 
cord which    had   already  split    the    national    life  we   are 
presented  with  a  picture  of  the  outraged  people  inciting 
each  other  to  rebellion,  and   displaying   in  the   market- 
place the  actual   chains   of  their  slavery.     And  just   as 
during  the   later  Republic  its  leaders  ^w^re  com  pell  ed7  in 
order  to  procure  peace  at  home,  to  declare  war  abroad, 
so,  the  early  oligarchy,  in  order^to_hobdwTnir  the  nation 
and  to  postpone  reform^^Trequently  invented~_'the   scare_ 
of  a  foreign  war,  and  mvited  the  Romans  to  attack  their 
neighbours,  r  But  the  shrewd  people  declare^~t:Tiat  their 
infernal  wereSnore  dangerous  than  their  external  enemies, 
and  they  knew,  as  modern  Russians  know,  that  military 
success   only   doubles   the   despotism   of  a   bureaucracyj 
The  social  paralysis  was  so  widespread  that  about  454  B.C. 
a  very  remarkable  compromise  was  arranged.     Tradition 
says   that   an   embassy  was   sent   to  Athens   in   order   to 
study  and  to  bring  back  the  Laws  of  Solon,  which,  as  we 
have  seen,  had  been  devised  to  meet  a  similar  crisis.     It  is 
true  that  this  embassy  has  been  likewise  treated  as  a  fiction,^ 

^  Livy,i_6a. 

'  VIco,  pp.  214  sqq.  Pais  does  not  seem  to  mention  that  Vico  had 
anticipated  the  criticism  according  to  which  the  traditional  account  of 
the  embassy  is  una  semplice  chimera  {Storia,  i.  592). 


ROME  229 

and  it  has  been  pointed  out  that  the  Laws  of  the 
Twelve  Tables,  which  are  supposed  to  have  been  the 
result  of  the  mission,  contain  a  resumi  of  the  legislation 
not  of  the  fifth  but  of  the  fourth  century.  For  in- 
stance, bronze  money  and  rates  of  interest  are  mentioned, 
whereas  these  were  not  known  in  Rome  till  much  later. 
The  money,  however,  may  have  been  weighed  copper ; 
and,  besides,  various  recensions  of  the  Twelve  Tables 
may  have  been  made  in  which  new  enactments  were 
gradually  incorporated.  There  is  nothing  really  sur- 
prising in  the  tradition  that  the  Romans  had  sent  to 
Athens  for  political  guidance  rather  than  to  the  unstable 
Greek  cities  at  their  own  doors.  It  was  now  the  age  of 
Pericles,  and  Athens  had  filled  the  world  with  her  name. 
It  must,  however,  have  been  not  the  Laws  of  Solon 
merely,  but  the  renewed  Athenian  Constitution  which 
had  grown  out  of  them,  that  the  ambassadors  were  ordered 
to  study.  Those  writers  who,  like  Vico,  doubt  whether 
any  embassy  was  sent  at  all,  forget  that  the  battles  of 
Marathon  and  of  Salamis  had  been  fought,  and  that  the 
Athenian  achievement  had  stirred  the  civilised  world. 
What  could  have  been  wiser  than  to  imitate  the  social 
structure  of  a  State  which,  having  saved  itself  from  the 
same  kind  of  internal  crisis  which  was  now  threatening 
Rome,  had  likewise  been  able  to  save  Europe  from  the 
Persians .''  Communication  between  both  States  must 
have  been  far  less  difficult  than  we  are  apt  to  suppose. 
In  fact,  a  regular  interchange  of  ideas  had  been  taking 
place  between  the  eastern  and  the  western  Mediterranean. 
But,  in  any  case,  it  is  certain  that  Greeks  and  Romans 
had",  md.ependently_and  on  the  threshold  of  their  natioiiaT 
careers,  reached  the  same  kind^  of  political  deadlock,  and 
had'discovered  the  need^  of  revolution. 

7.  in  the  earliest  phase  of  Italian  as  of  Greek  history, 
we  become  aware  of  a  kind  of  guerilla  advance  of  races  and 


230  THE   NEMESIS   OF   NATIONS 

divisions  of  races,  all  pressing  into  the  Peninsula.     Like 
those  Greeks  whose  political  unity  became  at  last  em- 
bodied in  Athens,  the  people  whose  national  force  reached 
its  climax  in  Rome   stopped  just  in  sight  of  the  shore. 
But  behind  them,  and  in  front  of  them,  and  on  all  sides 
great    racial    movements    and    disturbances    had    already 
taken  place.     When  Livy  tjUsus  that  the  founders  of 
the   city   chose   itT'site^Because   oT^'ts  nearness   to   the 
Mediterranean,  as  the  great   highway  of  commerce,  he_ 
is  writing  history  backwards.    Strabo,  on  the  other  hand, 
expressed  the  sensible   view  that  tKiT^aoejwas  selected 
fof^tHe"  reason    that    there  jvy as    none    other  to  select. 
Early    Italy,   like    early   Greece,   was  the  scene   of  pei> 
petual  racial  and  tribal  displacements.      It   is   generally 
agreed  that  the  ancestors  of  the  Latin  stocks  must  have 
entered   Italy  from  the   north.     They   may  have   come 
over  the  barrier  of  the  Alps.     But  we  have  no  means 
of  ascertaining  the  velocity  of  their  descent  southwards. 
Their  advance  was  probably  very  slow,  and  was  impeded 
not  only  by  the  nature  of  the  ground,  which  was  then 
mainly  marshy,  but  by  the  presence  of  other  races,  either 
alien  or  akin,  who  were  already  in  possession  of  the  land. 
Italy  was  an  Armageddon  long  before  the  word  "Italy" 
had  been  pronounced.     But  we  know  little  of  the  dim 
pioneer  peoples  who  had  first  wandered  into  the  country 
centuries  before  the  date  of  Rome.     Such,  for  instance, 
were  the  lapygians,  who  had  reached  Calabria,  and  had 
then  become  fused  with  Greek  invaders  from  Epirus.     It 
has  been  supposed  that  the  epitaphs  on  their  gravestones, 
which  time  had  buried   almost  as  low  as  the  dead  who 
lay  beneath   them,    prove   that    their    original   language 
was  related   to    Sanskrit.      They   may    thus    have    been 
another  outpost  of  that  long  "Aryan"  line  which  some 
mysterious    instinct    had    always    led    towards    the    sea. 
Another  people,   however,   the    Ligurians,    whom   some 


ROME  231 

writers  believe  to  have  been  Basques,  had  arrived  even 
earlier  in  Italy,  and  had  devastated  both  sides  of  the 
Apennines.^  Their  language  has  perished,  but  certain 
local  names,  such  as  Neviasca,  Veraglasca,  appear  to 
indicate  that  the  Ligurians  were  not  related  to  the 
Italian  stocks.  They  are  described  as  a  wild  people, 
who  despised  agriculture,  lived  by  the  chase,  and  clothed 
themselves  in  the  skins  of  animals.  In  later  times,  when 
Rome  had  arisen,  they  were  driven  into  the  region  round 
Genoa — whither,  indeed,  they  may  have  originally  come 
from  the  Pyrenees — and  we  hear  that  they  carried  on  a 
trade  in  honey,  flesh,  and  fur.  But  that  once  they 
had  been  dominant  within  the  Peninsula  is  proved  by 
the  fact  that  the  most  ancient  name  of  the  river  Po, 
Bodenkos,  is  a  Ligurian  word.  A  people  still  more 
enigmatic  than  the  Ligurians,  however,  and  the  deadly 
enemies  of  them  as  well  as  of  all  other  Italian  stocks, 
were  the  Etruscans.  No  one  has  yet  succeeded  in  dis- 
covering their  real  racial  relations,  although,  according 
to  ancient  /and  to  some  modern  writers,  they  were 
Asktjc  Grefcks.  The  legend  that  they  destroyed  three 
hundred  towns  is  at  least  a  sure  sign  that  they  were 
once  the  most  formidable  power  in  Italy.  Their  league 
of  cities,  of  which  Veii  was  the  greatest  and  Rome's 
nearest  neighbour,  were  doubtless  the  main  centres  of 
Italian  civilisation  before  the  arrival  of  the  Greeks. 
The  Etruscans  were  a  seafaring  nation,^_and__early 
en£eredlnto~commercia^  L.art"hage.    Their 

achievements  in  art  are  of  some  importance  in  the 
attempt  to  determine  the  race.  For  their  sculpture 
exhibits  a  thick-limbed  type,  which  bears  no  resem- 
blance to  the  Hellenic  or  the  Italian.  The  discovery 
in  recent  times  of  an  Etruscan  inscription  in  the  island 
of  Lemnos  has  been  supposed   to  confirm  the  Asiatic 

^  Helbig,  Die  Italiker,  p.  30. 


2  32  THE   NEMESIS   OF   NATIONS 

origin  of  the  race.  No  one  can  say  with  certainty,  how- 
ever, whether  the  Etruscans  arrived  in  Italy  by  the  land 
route  or  by  sea.  They  are  so  hidden  from  us  in  the 
ages  that  their  gems,  their  bronzes,  their  coins,  and  their 
pottery,  and  the  two  hundred  surviving  words  of  their 
language,  do  little  to  explain  the  real  meaning  of  their 
presence  in  Italy.  It  is  significant,  however,  that  among 
the  few  Etruscan  words  which  have  come  down  to  us  two 
of  them  are  the  terms  for  the  male  and  the  female  slave, 
etera  and  eteraia.  This  fact  is  sufficient  to  let  us  see 
that  Etruria  also  was  a  slave  power,  and  that  her  civili- 
sation was  one  more  failure  in  the  long  experiment  in 
slavery.  What  is  really  important  to  remember,  how- 
ever, is  that  at  last  only  the  Tiber  separated  the  Roman 
from  the  Etruscan  frontier,  and  that  Veii  was  less  than 
twelve  miles  from  Rome.  It  was  Etruria,  in  fact,  which 
delayed  the  Roman  expansion  towards  the  north. 

8.  And  yet  the  Etruscans,  in  turn,  had  their  own 
enemy  in  the  north,  the  Celts,  who  entered  Italy  in 
such  strength  that  they  were  able  to  obliterate  the  traces 
not  merely  of  Etruscans  but  of  Ligurians,  and  to  give 
to  the  river  Bodenkos  its  modern  name  the  Po.  The 
discovery  of  ancient  Celtic  cemeteries  extending  for  a 
hundred  miles  from  the  Ticino  to  Verona  and  Milan  is 
believed  to  have  proved  that  Celts  had  settled  in  Italy 
long  before  the  fourth  century.  They  had  probably 
arrived  in  Lombardy  as  early  as  looo  b.c.,^  and  had 
come  from  the  valley  of  the  Danube.  They  were  the 
Bedouins  of  Europe,  and  went  in  search  of  the  gold 
and  glitter  which  fascinated  them.  Later  they  would 
strike  a  blow  at  Rome,  and  capture  the  city  almost 
on  the  centenary  of  Marathon,  390  b.c.^     Polybius  has 

*  Bertrand  and  Reinach,  p.  44. 

^  The  actual  date,  however,  of  the  battle  of  the  Allia  appears  to  have 
been  July  18,  388  B.C.     Cf.  Mommsen,  "  Hist,  of  Rome,"  Bk.  1 1,  ch.  iv. 


ROME 


233 


drawn  a  vivid  portrait  of  their  warriors,  half-naked 
and  adorned  with  gold  necklaces  and  bracelets,  and 
betraying  that  impulsive  character  which  has  marked 
the  race  throughout  its  strange  and  sad  history.  If, 
however,  they  were  too  impatient  to  construct  any 
solid  home  for  themselves,  they  knew  how  to  make 
use  of  the  building  of  another  people.  There  was  a 
town  called  Felsina,  built  by  the  Etruscans.  The  Celts 
swooped  upon  it,  seized  it,  and  gave  it  a  name,  Bononia 
(Bologna),  which  has  lasted  into  modern  times.  In 
a  garden  near  the  city  a  discovery  was  made  which 
perhaps  will  enable  us,  without  any  weary  accumulation 
of  detail  concerning  those  struggles,  to  see  the  rest- 
lessness of  that  early  Italy.  Various  strata  of  burial 
ground  were  excavated,  and  the  uppermost  contained 
a  Roman  tomb.  Beneath  it  lay  twelve  graves,  in  which 
the  long  iron  swords,  and  the  peculiar  shape  of  the 
brooches  beside  them,  betrayed  Celtic  remains.  But  still 
deeper  another  sepulchre  gave  up  the  bones  and  orna- 
ments of  Etruscans,  as  well  as  certain  debris  which 
appears  to  have  belonged  to  pile-dwellers.  Now,  if 
we  remember  that  from  the  foot  of  the  Alps  to  the 
southern  coast  of  the  Peninsula  the  deeper  soil  must 
contain  the  dust  of  different  races,  we  see  that  long 
before  Rome  became  great  Italy  was  a  necropolis  in 
which  many  generations  were  already  asleep. 

9.  This  early  racial  chaos  of  Italy  found  expression 
in  a  chaos  of  languages.  We  are  immediately  interested 
only  in  the  Latins,  but  even  in  their  case  we  find 
that  on  the  threshold  of  the  new  home  the  race  had 
broken  into  hostile  groups,  each  of  which,  developed 
a  special  autonomy  and  a  special  dialect.  !  The  history 
of  the  operations  of  this  strange  law  of  racikrbifurcation 
is  really  the  history  of  nationalities,  but  wc  cannot 
follow    its    ramifications    even    within    Italy,    far    less 


234  THE   NEMESIS  OF   NATIONS 

throughout  the  world,  j  What  interest  has  the  modern 
reader  in  dim  forgotten  tribes  such  as  Picentes,  Osci, 
Marsi,  Volsci,  Vestini,  and  a  host  of  others  ?  Why 
should  the  Romans,  of  all  the  Latins,  have  succeeded 
where  so  many  other  tribes  failed  ?  Why  out  of  fifty 
seeds  should  only  one  germinate  and  forty-nine  die  ? 
It  is  no  longer  possible  to  discover  in  the  variations 
of  the  Latin  dialects  the  key  to  the  variations  of  Latin 
character.  And  yet  there  may  be  some  subtle  reason 
why  Samnites,  for  instance,  used  a  '*  p  "  where  Romans 
used  a  "  q,"  and  why  both  peoples  retained  the  ablative 
case  while  the  Greeks  lost  it.  It  is  certainly  remark- 
able that  as  late  as  400  B.C.  the  Latin  language  was 
spoken  within  a  radius  of  only  fifty  miles.  Nevertheless, 
although  Italy  was  as  full  of  tongues  as  Babylonia,  in 
the  end  the  Umbrian,  Sabine,  Marsian,  Volscian,  and 
many  other  dialects,  together  with  the  Italian,  Greek, 
and  the  Etruscan  languages,  were  all  dominated  and 
destroyed  by  Latin.  If  we  except  the  Etruscan,  how- 
ever, and  perhaps  the  Ligurian  as  both  doubtful,  the 
other  Italian  dialects  possessed  a  common  basis  of  Aryan 
speech.  We  have  said  that  Ligurians  and  lapygians  are 
the  earliest  nationalities  known  to  us  in  Italy.  But 
another  people  called  Siculi,  familiar  to  the  writer  of 
the  Odyssey,  were  at  least  their  contemporaries,  if  not 
their  forerunners ;  because,  although  their  history  does 
not  belong  to  Italy,  they  had  once  passed  through  the 
Peninsula.  According  to  Thucydides,  however,  they 
passed  out  of  it  about  iioo  B.C.  For  they  were 
gradually  driven  by  other  tribes  to  the  southern  shore, 
and  they  sailed  for  Sicily,  to  which  they  gave  their 
name,  in  rafts  or  boats  probably  from  Rhegium.  Their 
name  is  important,  because  it  means  "  reapers."  They 
were  thus  an  agricultural  people,  and  they  have  been 
described    as    *'  undeveloped  Latins."     That    is    to    say. 


ROME  235 

they,  too,  belonged  to  those  peoples  of  Aryan  speech 
who  had  thus  spread  themselves  so  early  throughout 
the  lands  and  seas  of  the  known  world.  The  different 
routes  of  the  migrations  of  a  people  create  different 
qualities  of  endurance,  of  invention,  of  imagination, 
and  produce  the  most  profound  change  in  the  racial 
character  of  men  whose  ancestors  were  once  united. 
Every  race  has  produced  within  itself  deep  and  per- 
manent variations.  Many,  although  probably  not  all, 
of  the  peoples  who  spoke  Aryan  languages  originally 
shared  some  common  blood,  and  yet  after  a  few  centuries 
of  separation  they  created  numerous  types  of  nationality 
and  of  dialect.  While  the  Greeks,  for  instance,  were 
already  otiose,  the  Romans  were  still  practising  for 
the  gladiatorial  combat  which  was  to  be  their  destiny. 
The  obstacles  which  their  forefathers  had  met  in  the 
Italic  Peninsula  were  probably  more  formidable  than 
those  which  the  Greeks  had  met  in  Greece.  It  is 
true  that,  like  the  Latins,  the  Greeks  were  ceaselessly 
engaged  in  fratricidal  war.  /But  the  Latins  were  longer 
surrounded  by  more  powerful  alien  stocks,  as  well  as 
by  warlike  kindred."]  When  they  reached  Latium  the 
rear  was  immediately  filled  up  by  hostile  races.  In 
front  of  them  were  the  Greeks.  If  Latins  had  reached 
Campania  before  the  Greek  immigration,^  they  were 
soon  compelled  to  retire.  Even  the  coasts  were  in 
possession  of  their  enemies.  []Tt  was  no  wonder  that 
under  such  circumstances  the  entire  people  were  the 
army,  and  that  when  they  met  in  assembly  it  was  at 
the  call  of  a  trumpet  and  on  the  signal  of  a  red  flag, 
and  in  the  field  of  their  god  of  warT]  Just  as  the  force 
of  explosion  and  expansion  becomes  more  invincible  the 
more  it  is  concentrated,  so  Rome  accumulated  her  volcanic 
energy  within  an  area  too  small  to  contain  it. 

^  Mommsen,  i.  40. 


236  THE   NEMESIS   OF   NATIONS 

10.  Archasological  research  appears  to  have  proved 
that  the  early  Italic  peoples  dwelt  in  the  valley  of  the 
Po  long  before  their  descendants  fought  their  way  into 
the  Plain  of  Latium.  But  we  should  receive  an  utterly 
wrong  impression  if  we  supposed  that  the  soil  of  modern 
Italy  resembles  its  condition  in  the  prehistoric  age.  In 
co-operation  with  nature,  man  has  frequently  changed  the 
quality  of  the  soil.  Owing  to  his  patient  labour,  the 
scenery  of  at  least  the  lower  levels  has  changed  with  his 
own  changing  history.  At  first  rather  the  victim  of  the 
landscape,  he  gradually  subdued  it  to  his  own  uses. 
Impassive  as  a  shepherd,  he  became  active  as  a  husband- 
man, (jn  Italy,  as  in  Babylonia,  much  rude  engineering 
was  necessary  before  a  marshy  land  was  made  fit  even 
for  habitation.  The  remains  of  pile-dwellings  prove  that 
originally  a  great  part  of  Italy  was  a  swam^  Owing 
to  the  overflow  of  uncontrollable  rivers  and  Takes,  the 
valleys  must  have  been  frequently  converted  into  a  kind 
of  inland  lagoons.  We  are  to  imagine  ourselves  in  the 
middle  of  a  landscape  covered  always  by  forest  and  often 
by  water,  with  here  and  there  a  clearing  in  an  area  more 
or  less  drained,  and  in  every  clearing  a  village  set  on  piles. 
Round  the  village  a  few  scanty  fields  of  flax,  beans,  and 
wheat  lay  cultivated,  but  the  agricultural  limit  was 
gradually  extended  as  the  land  was  won  from  the  water. 
Remains  of  apples,  cherries,  hazel-nuts,  and  wild  plums 
have  been  found  in  the  sunk  debris  of  those  ancient 
villages.  Even  the  vine  may  have  been  cultivated  in 
patches,  although,  according  to  Pliny,  it  became  known 
only  late  to  the  Romans.^  But  there  seems  to  be  no 
reason  to  believe  that  the  vine  was  brought  to  Italy  by 
the  Greeks,  since  they  would  hardly  have  called  it  the 
land  of  wine  if  they  had  been  compelled  to  plant  the 
first  vine  roots.     In  the  older  Roman  ritual  the  victims 

1  N.  H.,  V.  17. 


ROME  237 

were  sprinkled  not  with  wine  but  with  milk.  But  ritual 
is  essentially  traditional  and  stagnant,  and  a  usage  belong- 
ing to  a  very  primitive  period  long  remains  an  ana- 
chronism. The  vine,  therefore,  may  have  been  known 
to  the  Italian  pile-dwellers.  The  most  ancient  remains 
about  Parma  prove  that  the  builders  of  those  wooden  and 
clay  cabins  thatched  with  straw  did  not  use  iron  but  bronze. 
They  were  not  Celts,  because  their  tools  are  quite  different 
from  those  recognised  as  Celtic  and  discovered  on  both 
sides  of  the  Alps.  The  long  iron  swords  which,  as  we 
saw,  were  found  in  the  tombs  at  Bologna  were  brought  and  n  '  %^ 
were  wielded  by  the  hands  of  later  Celtic  invaders.  And  --^  \iA^^^-H^ 
that  Etruscans  were  not_the  builders  of  the  pile  villages  ^../.^p^  -jV^ 
is'KeT3To"BF^rove3ITy3h  fact  that  Etruscan  remains^  ^^  ,\  o-^ 
aFe  found  far  nearer  the  surface.  Traces  of  basket  and  of 
leathern  work,  and  flaxerf  threads  implying  spinning  and 
weaving,  indicate  that  the  pile-dwellers  enjoyed  a  certain  ^-"^A^^-'*"'" — '  • 
amount  of  civilisation  if  not  of  comfort.  As  a  result  of  ' 
an  examination  of  bones,  two  species  of  horses  and  dogs 
have  been  identified  ;  and  the  fact  that  the  remains  of 
such  animals  as  the  stag,  the  boar,  and  the  bear  are  few 
in  comparison  with  those  of  tamer  beasts  is  a  sign  that  the 
former  were  hunted  by  a  people  who  had  made  a  fixed 
home  for  themselves  in  surroundings  which,  although 
still  wild,  were  gradually,  and  perhaps  even  rapidly, 
falling  under  human  control.  There  is  reason  to  believe 
that  those  pile-dwellers  not  only  belonged  to  the  Latin 
stock  but  were  actually  the  forerunners  of  the  Romans. 
They  lived  closely  together,  and  foreshadowed  that  in- 
tense corporate  life  which  was  the  strength  and  the 
glory  of  Rome  and  of  many  other  Aryan  communities. 
It  is  with  something  like  an  emotion  that  we  discover 
that  a  frail  pile  village  was  the  humble  original  form 
of  Rome's  great  structure.  The  urns  discovered  in 
Alba  and  the  most  ancient  ruins  on  the  Esquiline  hill 


238  THE   NEMESIS  OF  NATIONS 

betray  the  same  kind  of  material  and  the  same  mode 
of  building  which  are  found  in  the  valley  of  the  Po. 
In  fact,  all  primitive  Latin  architecture  was  based  on 
a  plan  which  is  discovered  not  merely  among  similar 
remains  in  Italy,  but  in  Mecklenburg,  Bavaria,  and 
Switzerland,  and  the  conclusion  is  that  the  ancestors  of 
Romans  had  carried  into  Italy  a  civilisation  which  equally 
belonged  to  the  "  barbarians  "  of  Middle  Europe,  Dacia, 
and  Thrace.^ 

II.  Mankind  cling  to  their  experience  long  after 
they  have  settled  in  a  new  home.  The  fact  that  pile 
villages  were  constructed  on  dry  ground  only  means 
that  an  architectural  tradition  had  become  so  strong  that 
it  was  with  difficulty  abandoned.  And  yet  when  the 
descendants  of  the  pile  villagers  arrived  in  Latium  its 
soil  cannot  have  been  essentially  different  from  the  soil 
farther  north.  Even  to-day  it  betrays  its  old  tendency 
to  marsh-land.  In  the  earlier  age  of  Rome  the  Forum 
and  the  Campus  Martius  were  swamps,  and  a  sheet  of 
water  separated  the  Capitol  and;  the  Palatine  hill,  so  that 
communication  between  them  took  place  by  means  of 
skiffs  and  rafts.  In  fact,  primitive  Italy,  like  primitive 
Chaldaea,  had  arp-amphibious  character,  and  there  is 
a  certain  analogy  between  the  sites  of  Rome  and  of 
Babylon.  We  saw  how  immense  was  the  struggle  against 
fever  in  the  Chaldasan  Plain,  and  here  again  in  the  Plain  of 
Latium  we  find  altars  raised  to  Fever  and  to  Evil  FortuneJ 
Those  altars  were  placed  on  the  hills,  some  on  the  Esqui- 
line  and  some  on  the  Palatine ;  not  surely,  as  Becker 
supposes,  because  the  higher  ground  was  as  unhealthy 
as  the  lower,  but  in  accordance  with  the  ancient  practice 
of  bestowing  special  honour  on  the  malevolent  power. 

^  Herodotus  (v.  16)  gives  a  graphic  picture  of  various  pile  villages, 
Asiatic  and  European,  and  adds  the  interesting  information  that  they 
were  communistic,  since  "the  piles  which  bear  up  the  platforms  were 
fixed  in  their  places  by  the  whole  body  of  the  citizens." 


/ 


ROME  239 

The  outbreak  of  pestilence  was  frequent  in  Rome,  and 
never  failed  to  produce  the  utmost  terror.  But  the 
Romans  brought  their  altars  to  Fever  along  with  them, 
for  the  valley  of  the  Po  must  have  been  at  least  as 
unhealthy  as  the  Plain  of  Latium. 

12.  The  origins  of  many  Roman  customs  lay  deep  in 
the  past,  and  help  to  indicate  the  continuity  in  the 
national  life  and  religion.  For  instance,  the  notification 
and  registration  of  the  outbreak  of  fever  and  of  other 
epidemics  was  the  duty  of  the  Pontifex  Maximus,  but 
in  order  to  understand  the  real  meaning  of  his  office  we 
must  go  back  to  the  period  of  migration.  Why  was  it 
that  the  Pontifex  Maximus,  or  supreme  priest,  had  his 
official  residence  beside  the  old  pile  bridge.  Pons 
Sublicius,  which  spanned  the  Tiber.?  It  was  because 
he  was  originally  a  bridge  builder,  pontem  facere}  An 
axe  belonged  to  the  insignia  of  his  office,  and  although 
later  it  may  have  become  a  mere  symbol,  it  was  once  a 
genuine  reaUty.  For  during  the  great  age  of  migrations, 
when  Aryans  were  cutting  the  earliest  roads  through  the 
world,  many  rivers  had  been  met  and  had  been  success- 
fully crossed.  The  Pontifices  were  the  engineers.  But 
from  the  earliest  their  duties  had  a  deep  religious  mean- 
ing. We  are  to  remember  that  every  river  was  believed 
to  be  sacred,  and  the  actual  manifestation  of  a  god. 
Men  stood  with  awe  at  its  brink,  and  felt  instinctively 
that  to  throw  a  bridge  across  it  would  be  a  sacrilege  and 
an  insult.  As  usual  the  dilemma  was  met  by  the  old 
device  of  sacrifice.  As  soon  as  the  bridge  was  built, 
human  beings  were  thrown  into  the  river  to  appease  the 
river  god.  This  is  the  real  explanation  of  the  fact  that 
in  later  times  straw  figures  were  substituted  after  reli- 

1  This  etymology  is  retained  by  many  scholars.  Tiele,  however 
{Manuel  de  PHistoire  des  Religions,  Paris,  1885,  p.  337),  attempts  to 
prove  that  Pontifex  is  based  on  the  Sanskrit  root  pu  =  to  purify. 


240  THE   NEMESIS  OF  NATIONS 

gious  ideas  had  become  more  humane.  '^But  the  bizarre 
symbolism  of  Roman  religion  is  everywhere  to  be  under- 
stood as  nothing  more  than  a  ritualistic  representation  of 
original  practical  needsr)  Many  of  its  most  repulsive 
ideas  are  found  on  closer  inspection  to  be  extraordinarily 
ingenious.  Thus,  long  after  Rome  had  become  the 
mistress  of  the  world  all  her  national  undertakings  were 
preceded  by  an  attempt  to  consult  omens.  Almost 
every  magistrate  enjoyed  the  privilege  of  taking  auspices, 
auspicia  habere.  The  word  auspicium  had  relations  with 
Sanskrit,  for  it  is  a  combination  of  ^'/,  a  bird,  and  spak,  to 
1   ^^JTvv^  spy.     It  was  the  duty  of  the  magistrate  to  watch  the  sky 

nuv      .   r       for  the  motions  of  birds,  which  were  believed  to  be  divine 
c['(j>>^jM  signs.      He  was  aided  in  his  task  by  an  expert,  the  augur 
»  ^  ^      (Sanskrit  gar,  to  announce),  who  no  doubt  was  often  a 

^j^  .V^      charlatan,  and  could   never  meet   his  colleague  without 
smiling  ;  but  his  predecessor  in  the  migratory  age  was  no 
charlatan  at  all.     The  observation  of  the  sky  (servare  de 
^  C^  l-*'"'^'"^  coelo)  was  of  the  utmost  importance  to  a  people  on  the 

'Kyj-^'^     •  ^  march,   and    those   who   undertook    the   function   really 
j^  J^^^"^        served  the  purposes  of  a  modern  meteorological  office. 
'r^l       ^^  we  consider  the  matter  sympathetically  we  shall  see 
^0 J^f^jjk^    that  the   apparently  fantastic    notion  of  foretelling    the 
_^  ^     ^  -      future  by  means  of  the  flight  of  birds  is,  after  all,  not  so 
-/^  \    fantastic.     At  first  it  had  to  do  only  with  the  weather. 
^"^  v\  IC*'''^  Even  tonday  we  are  sometimes  able  to  foretell  a  storm 
"^  ^  >-        by  the  fact  that  sea-birds  come  landward,  and  that  land 
birds  betray  great  agitation.     With  the  help  of  the  augur, 


^'y 


^  was  able  to  prepare  for  the  coming  storm.     And  we  can      \ 

.      easily   understand   why   the   flash   of  lightning   and   the 
,       distant  rumbling  of  thunder  began  to  have  a  religious    .^y 
jj"^^   significance   and   to    be   conceived   as    a   divine   warning 
(^,^^     '-^^against  any  immediate  advance.     With  strange  intolerance 
■^     yiAM'^t^  Mommsen  ridiculed  the  Etruscan  lightning  religion,  but 


ROME  241 

surely  its  "jugglery  "  was  only  the  result  of  later  ritualistic 
excess  and  religious  decadence.  Even  Cassar  had  his 
Etruscan  soothsayer,  who  interpreted  for  him  the  signs 
of  the  day.  And  we  should  probably  consider  this  aspect 
of  Etruscan  religion  as  rather  a  proof  of  early  contact 
or  affinity  with  Aryan  mythology  and  with  the  spirit 
which  lies  behind  the  Vedas.  Even  when  the  Romans 
had  become  a  cultured  people  they  did  not  forget 
the  rude  practical  instincts  of  their  forefathers.  If, 
for  example,  during  the  meeting  of  the  public  assembly 
a  thunderstorm  broke,  the  assembly  was  immediately 
adjourned.  Again,  it  appears  doubtless  preposterous 
that  the  Romans,  who  possessed  great  common  sense  as 
well  as  intellectual  power,  should  have  supposed  that  it 
was  a  religious  duty  to  inspect  the  entrails  of  animals 
before  undertaking  any  great  enterprise.  But  the  custom 
belonged  to  a  very  remote  age.  When  a  wandering 
tribe  arrived  in  a  new  region  it  was  natural  for  them  to 
ask  whether  the  place  was  healthy  and  the  water  pure. 
It  was,  therefore,  nothing  less  than  a  stroke  of  rude 
genius  which  prompted  them  to  procure  some  of  the 
native  cattle,  kill  them,  and  examine  their  entrails  for 
any  signs  of  disease.^  And  in  this  fact  we  detect  the 
origin  of  the  apparent  absurdities  of  the  art  of  divination 
as  practised  by  the  Etruscan  and  Roman  soothsayers.  -q      wr-o-^ 

13.  Pqlybius  said  that  the  best  means  towards  under-  v^^        ""  c -VtC 
st^^ing^heJ^man~cHaraaef  is  the  stu3y  of  the  Kornan  re-  Ju''^{^'"'V^ 
ligioji^    If  we  set  asT3e  those  elemenfs  wKtcH' were  "borrowed     v^u^^^^'6^ 
from  a  multitude  of  alien  creeds  after  Rome  had  con-   ,^_J^  ^ 
quered  the  world,  there  remains  a  basis  of  nature-worship  V.^^^ 

in  which  we  discover  a  sort  of  subdued  form  of  the  ecstasy -^ 

of  the  Vedas.     The  Latins  gave  their  own  peculiar  ex-       r:,5'.,iv-d--4  > 

pression  to  the  religion  which  they  shared  with  the  rest       T" 

of  the  Aryan  race.     No  doubt  in  her  religion,  as  in  her    \  lyU^f-. 

'  Von  Ihering,  "  The  Evoluton  of  the  Aryan,"  p.  369.        -Aj^j   ^i^^AS-.KjJ'^^ 

Q  «r^  c 


^ 


o-^^ 


242  THE   NEMESIS   OF   NATIONS 

art  and  in  her  letters,  Rome  was  a  great  plagiarist  and 
interminable  borrower.  But  the  period  when  Latin  beliefs 
were  most  original  was  when  Greek  sculptors  were  not 
yet  summoned  to  Rome  to  make  effigies  of  the  gods. 
Since,  however,  Greek  influence  came  in  very  early — even, 
indeed,  in  the  time  of  the  Tarquins — we  are  compelled 
(if  we  wish  to  find  anything  characteristic)  to  examine 
the  most  primitive  phases  of  Latin  religion,  that  is  to 
say,  the  religion  of  the  people  when  they  were  still  in 

fr,  jnclose  contact  with  nature.  Thus  they  worshipped  Faunus^ 
J^  o-jJ^  ,  the  godL._p£_til^-fi^elds,  and  Pales,  the  goddess  of  shep^ 
<'^yJ-^  >  herds  and  their  flocks,  long  beTore  they  heard  of  Demeter 
"j^^-^^*  ^  or  of  Pan.  The  tradition  that  under  the  decemvirs — 
^      3^^  •  that  is,  about  450  b.c. — the  worship  of  Apollo  appeared 

^"^ii  in   Rome,  should   perhaps   be    accepted    both  as  a  con- 

firmation of  the  historical  truth  of  that  embassy  to 
Athens  which  we  have  already  mentioned,  and  as  a  sign 
of  the  religious  curiosity  of  the  Romans.  In  those  days 
men  were  as  inquisitive  about  new  gods  as  they  are  in 
modern  times  about  new  scientific  discoveries.  The  day 
came  when  Rome  insisted  on  being  officially  represented 
at  the  oracle  of  Delphi.  But  that  was  the  beginning  of 
a  flabby  cosmopolitanism.  In  due  time  all  the  gods 
of  Egypt  and  of  the  East  were  brought  to  Rome,  just 
as  the  gods  of  vassal  cities  were  brought  to  Babylon. 
Mithras,  Cybele,  Isis,  and  Serapis  all  had  their  Roman 
devotees ;  for,  much  as  it  may  surprise  us,  there  was  a 
latent  and  repressed  mysticism  in  the  Roman  mind. 
Even  Caesar  found  a  certain  fascination  in  the  religion 
of  the  Druids,  and  no  doubt  watched  many  a  fire  kindled 
on  the  cairns  and  cromlechs  of  the  hills  of  Britain 
(55  B.C.).  He  attempted  to  identify  the  god  of  the 
British  Druids  with  the  Roman  Mercury.  Rome,  in  fact, 
became  the  rendezvous  of  all  beliefs,  and  we  hear  that 
in  the  time  of  the   Empire  Chaldasan  astrologers  were 


ROME  243 

actually  made  public  teachers  and  enjoyed  great  popu- 
larity.-^ Generations  of  Latins,  however,  had  lived  and 
had  died  in  a  more  primitive  faith  long  before  such 
events  took  place,  and  even  long  before  the  State  con- 
sulted the  Sibylline  Books  of  Cumai  or  appointed  a 
college  of  experts  for  their  interpretation.  When  we 
know  that  in  the  age  of  Sulla  (138-78  B.C.)  statues 
of  Jupiter,  Juno,  Minerva,  and  of  other  divinities  were 
copied  from  Greek  models  and  made  by  Greek  hands, 
we  feel  that  there  is  little  that  is  really  new  to  say 
regarding  the  religion  of  the  State.  It  had  become 
denationalised  and  cosmopolitan.  And  yet,  as  Polybius 
has  reminded  us,  it  was  religion  which  kept  the  Roman 
commonwealth  together.^  The  old  Forum,  which  was 
the  centre  of  the  State's  life,  lay  immediately  under  the 
temple  of  Capitoline  Jupiter,  and  indeed  was  really  part 
of  its  precincts.  In  spite  of  such  a  fact,  it  is  not  in  the 
public  but  rather  in  the  private  worship  of  the  Roman 
people,  in  certain  moral  ideas  which  grew  out  of  that 
worship,  and  in  a  haunting  but  somewhat  timid  view 
of  nature,  that  the  real  charm  of  their  religion  lies. 

14.  The  temptation  to  deify  everything  which  mani- 
fested any  form  of  power,  and  even  to  deify  many  abstract 
conceptions,  created  a  certain  confusion.  Wherever  the 
Roman  went  there  was  a  god  at  his  elbow.  Although 
Jupiter  (Sanskrit,  Dyaus-pita')  embodied  the  greatest 
concentration  of  religious  authority,  yet  Janus  or  lanus, 
the_^od_of  Jbegmnm^s^__toolc_^^  and  was  even 

calIed_"-gQjd._of  gods  "  {divum  deurny.  _  He  was  ¥n  old 
sun  god,  the  opener  ofjthe^oorsof  jthe  morning.  He 
was  the  originaFApollo  of  the  Romans,  and  was  known 
to  them  long  before  the  Apollo  of  the  Greeks  and  other 
Greek  heroes  were  worshipped  by  the   men  of  Etruria. 

-J-Juvenal,  Sat.  vi.  553.     "  Chaldaeis  sed  maior  erit  fiducia," 


244  THE   NEMESIS   OF   NATIONS 

His  earliest  effigy  with  the  two  heads  was  so  placed  in 
the  Forum  that  one  head  looked  towards  the  w^est  and 
the  other  towards  the  east.     For  the    opener  was  also 
the    closer.     He   was   the   god    of  gates.     He  was   the 
presiding  spirit  over  all  beginnings  of  things,  the  making 
of  a  road  or  an  aqueduct,  the  opening  of  an  assembly  or 
the  declaration  of  war.     He  was  the  spirit  of  the  thresh- 
old, but    especially   of  the   threshold   of  the    morning. 
He,  lanus  or  Dianus,  was  really  the  male  form  for  light,  as 
Diana  was  the  female  form.     This_cry_fbr_light  carries 
us  back  to  the  Vedas,  and  so  connects^  the  purest  elements 
of  Roman  religron^wHh  thelirsrfresh  songs  of  the  Aryan 
race.   _^AJ1  th^Jeatin_gods^^(y}^  are^h  the  Iiferal  meaning, 
"  lights_of  Jiea3ie»T^    The  lu  of  Jupiter  is  a  Torm  of  the 
wordwhich  meant  dayspringin  Asia.     Hence  lanus  may, 
after  all,  only  be  an  aspect  of  Jupiter.     Rome,  indeed,  was 
never  so  impressed  by  the  heavens  as  was  Babylon.     We 
do  not   find    her   kneeling,    like    Babylon,    to   the   stars. 
But  we  find  in  her  early  religion  that  wonderful  sense  of 
the   morning  which  we  found  in  the  Vedas.     Much  of 
the  history  of  human  awe  and  emotion  is  contained  in  the 
ancient  names  of  the  gods.     Even  in  the  words  for  darker 
and  more  doubtful  things  we  discover  a  persistent  desire 
for  idealism.     Thus  departed  spirits  were   called — per- 
haps, indeed,  more  out  of  fear  and  obeisance  than  out  of 
genuine  hope — manes,  "  the  pure,"  "  the  brilliant,"  those 
who    had    gone    to    dwell    with    the    morning    (m^ne). 
Although  Greek  and   Roman   religion   rose   out   of  the 
same  sources,   there   is    a    sense   in  which   the   latter   is 
far    more   spiritual.     The    Roman  worshipped    no    lazy 
Olympians.     It  is  really  significant  of  his  character  that 
he  gave  no  nectar   to  his  gods.     It  was   only  when  he 
began  to  drug  himself  with  all  the  luxuries  of  the  East 
that  both  his  religion  and  his  virility  perished.     There 
was  even  a  stern  kind  of  Protestantism  and  Puritanism 


ROME  245 

^J  in  the  early  Roman.  He  disentangled  in  a  remarkable 
manner  religion  from  politics,  and  perhaps  that  is  one  of 
the  reasons  why  that  portion  of  the  Aryan  race  which 
was  governed  by  priests  in  Hindustan  was  ruined,  whereas 
that  portion  which  kept  priesthood  and  politics  distinct 
made  so  great  an  advance  in  Italy,  For  although  the 
national  life  was  closely  connected  with  the  national 
religion,  and  although,  for  instance,  the  Vestals  were 
the  guardians  of  the  sacred  symbols  of  the  State,  the 
Roman  citizen  stood  under  the  special  protection  of 
the  gods  of  his  own  hearth,  whose  priest  he  was.  Like 
a  Lutheran  or  a,Xalvinist,  he  _tolerated  nq_  middleman 
between  himself  and  hjs  household  gods.  Like  the 
Greeks,  the  Romans  made  Im'ages^'ahd  once  they  had 
worshipped  fetich  stones.  Later  they  worshipped  even 
the  emperors.  But  their  view  of  deity  was  less  sen- 
suous and  far  more  abstract  than  that  of  the  Greeks. 
Whereas  the  Greek  devotee  looked  his  god  full  in  the 
face,  the  Roman,  except  when  he  was  in  the  Temple 
of  Saturn,  reverently  covered  his  head.  He  did  not  see 
but  he  felt  his  god.  This  is  made  clear  in  the  words 
genius  and  numen^  for  both  of  them  imply  spiritual 
presences.  The  former  was  the  guardian  angel,  a  kind 
of  providence  which  followed  a  man  throughout  his  life, 
and  seldom  forsook  him ;  the  latter  was  a  spirit  of 
divine  warning  in  times  of  crisis.  Nature  was,  however, 
so  crowded  with  irresistible  forces  that  in  his  helpless- 
ness the  worshipper  used  an  old  formula  which  embraced 
them  all — "  Diique  omnes  caelestes  vosque  terrestres 
vosque  inferni  audite "  (Hear  us,  ye  gods  of  the  upper 
air,  of  the  earth,  and  of  the  under-world  !)  The  Roman 
was  specially  impressed  by  the  fertility  of  the  earth 
and  the  mysterious  processes  of  germination.  His 
belief  in  immortality  may  have  been  quickened  by 
his   observation    of   the   life   of   seeds.     For,    since    the 


246  THE   NEMESIS  OF   NATIONS 

earth  was  the  great  seed-bed,  endlessly  opulent,  the 
belief  that  the  sources  of  life  and  eternity  lay  far  beneath 
became  irresistible.  Strange  ritual  gradually  gathered 
round  the  ideas  of  growth  and  reproduction.  There 
was  a  god  of  gardens,  whose  dark  shrine  lay  covered 
by  a  mask  of  flowers — flame-coloured  violets,  drowsy 
saffron  poppies,  and  clusters  of  red  grapes.  But  amid 
the  perfume  of  apples  and  of  ripe  grain  there  was  also 
the  sinister  perfume  of  the  blood  of  a  victim,  and  hidden 
among  the  flowers  was  the  god's  dark  symbol,  a  cross. 
The  great  forces  of  passion,  dux  vita  dia  voluptas^  that 
Venus  whose  name  was  no  more  Latin  than  Sanskrit 
[vends,  dear  and  desirable),  and  all  the  other  deep 
symptoms  of  human  unrest,  received  the  most  vivid 
expression  in  those  ancient  creeds.  Beauty  and  terror 
were  strangely  mingled.  And  sometimes  when  we  study 
their  haunting  mythologies  we  feel  as  if,  having  pushed 
aside  a  rich,  heavy  branch  of  perfumed  blossom,  we 
suddenly  discovered  a  corpse  beneath  it.  In  Roman  as 
in  Greek  religion  there  was  a  ghostly  and  a  ghastly 
element.  The  gods  of  the  upper  air  are  more  benign, 
but  a  menace  always  comes  from  underneath.  Such  a 
combination  of  words  as  Jupiter  Lapis  proves  how  long 
the  human  mind  lay  entangled  in  the  monstrous  net  of 
barbarism.  In  all  old  religions  most  of  the  gods  had 
originally  two  aspects,  which  gradually  fell  asunder  and 
were  separately  deified  as  rivals.  Just  as  Christ  com- 
bats Antichrist,  so  Jove  had  his  anti-Jove,  Vediovis  or 
Vejovis,  who  played  in  the  Rome  of  the  Tarquins  and 
of  the  Republic  the  part  which  jthe  devil  played  in  the 
Rome  of  the  Middle  Ages.  ^This  distrust  of  destiny 
and  "fearful  looking  for  of  judgment"  is,  indeed,  the 
fundamental  theme  in  the  history  of  all  religionsTj  For 
religion  has  often  made  God   a   misanthropist.     In  the 

^  De  Rerum  Natura,  ii.  172. 


ROME  247 

Roman  formula  for  the  opening  of  prayer — "  Be  thou 
god  or  goddess,  male  or  female,  or  if  there  is  any  other 
name  whereby  thou  desirest  me  to  call  upon  thee" — 
what  blind  gropings  of  the  human  spirit  are  manifest  ! 

15.  The  religious  ideas  of  the  modern  are  so  funda- 
mentally opposed  to  those  of  the  ancient  world,  that 
when  we  ask  what  was  the  influence  which  such  a  reli- 
gion as  Rome's,  for  instance,  had  upon  Roman  character, 
we  are  presented  with  a  very  interesting  but  a  very 
difficult  problem.  Whereas,  in  the  opinion  of  i^schylus, 
his  religion,  in  spite  of  the  fantastic  robe  which  it  wore, 
possessed  the  deepest  moral  value  both  for  the  individual 
and  the  State,  in  the  opinion  of  Lucretius  that  same 
religion  was  the  enemy  not  merely  of  truth  but  of 
morals  and  of  reason.^  He  wrote  his  great  poem  with 
the  express  purpose  of  denouncing  it  and  delivering 
men's  minds  from  its  thraldom.  In  his  own  wonderful 
phrase,  which  he  is  never  weary  of  repeating  or  his 
reader  of  hearing,  he  looked  beyond  "  the  flaming  walls 
of  the  world  "  {^flammantia  mcenia  mundi)  and  found  no 
gods.^  He  who  had  a  scientific  if  not  a  materialistic 
explanation  not  merely  for  the  outer  world  of  matter, 
which  he  believed  was  eternal,  but  for  that  inner  world 
of  the  soul  which,  he  tells  us,  should  be  holier  than  any 
temple  of  any  Apollo,  turned  with  scorn  from  fairy-tales 
of  the  heavens.  He  asks  a  startlingly  modern  question, 
which  would  have  sounded  strange  to  the  astronomers  of 
Babylon — "  How  does  the  ether  feed  the  stars  .''  "  ^  And 
he  turns  with  contempt  from  gods  who  were  helpless  to 
prevent  even  their  own  bronze  statues  from  being  gradu- 
ally worn   away   by  the   kisses   and   the   touch   of  their 

1  1.62  sqq.     Cf.  i.  81,  82. 

2  "  Illud  item  non  est  ut  possis  credere,  sedes 

Esse  deum  sanctas  in  mundi  partibus  ullis"— (v.  146  sqq.). 

3  "  Unde  aether  sidera  pascit?"  (i.  231). 


248  THE   NEMESIS  OF   NATIONS 

devotees  in  the  streets.^  Thus  the  greatest  intellect  in 
Latin  literature  found  no  help  in  Latin  gods.  We 
wonder  how  far  the  unbelief  had  spread.  Lucretius 
and  the  Illuminati  of  Cassar's  age  were  doubtless  con- 
sidered by  humbler  folk  to  be  dangerous  infidels.  Even 
the  more  timid  and  conventional  Virgil,  who  saw  signs 
in  the  sun,"  hesitated  as  to  whether  belief  in  the  gods  or 
pure  rationalism  was  wiser  for  mortal  men.^  And  yet 
it  is  impossible  to  believe  that  he  and  the  other  three 
deepest  minds  which  Rome  produced — Lucretius,  Tacitus, 
and  Juvenal — were  altogether  unaffected  by  the  beliefs 
of  their  childhood.  In  the  case  of  Lucretius,  his  flaming 
scepticism  rather  indicates  that  sense  of  spiritual  loss  and 
longing  which  in  modern  times  is  considered  almost  to 
have  the  value  of  a  faith.  In  the  case  of  Tacitus,  a 
religious  and  even  a  superstitious  bias  is  more  easily 
seen.  In  a  remarkable  passage  in  which  he  refers  to 
the  religion  of  Israel  he  notices  with  respect,  and  almost 
with  reverence,  its  tenacious  monotheism.*  And  in  an- 
other there  are  signs  of  a  relation  between  his  own  religion 
and  his  moral  convictions.  He  is  painting  the  guilt  of 
Nero,  whose  first  attempt  at  matricide  has  failed.  The 
crime  was  to  have  taken  the  form  of  drowning  Agrip- 
pina  in  the  Bay  of  Baias.  But,  says  Tacitus,  the  gods,  as 
if  to  render  the  attempt  impossible,  because  too  visible, 
made  the  sea  that  night  never  so  calm  and  the  sky 
never  so  bright  with  stars.  When  at  last  the  imperial 
murderer  has  done  his  work  by  other  means,  Tacitus 
lifts  the  veil  upon  the  human  conscience,  and  we  see  a 
horror-struck  man  fleeing  from  the  sinister  place,  pur- 
sued by  hallucination  and  by  the  sound  of  a  mysterious 
trumpet  of  judgment  blown  in  the  hills.     Likewise,  and 

*  I.  316.  *  Georg.,  i.  463.  ^  Ibid.,  ii.  490  sqq. 

*  "Judaei  mente  sola  unumque  numen  intelligunt ;  profanos  qui 
deOm  imagines  mortalibus  materiis  in  species  hominum  effingant" 
(Hist.,  V.  5). 


ROME  249 

lastly,  in  the  case  of  Juvenal,  who  subjected  the  same 
era  to  his  furious  diagnosis,  we  become  aware  of  a  mind 
overwhelmed  by  the  sense  of  human  wrong.  And  he, 
too,  turns  from  the  shallow  civilisation  of  his  own  time 
to  consider  the  ancient  solemnities.-^ 

16.  Now,  it  is  difficult  for  us  to  understand  how  a 
bizarre  mythology  was  capable  of  creating  the  moral 
ideals  of  such  men,  but  it  is  clear  that  there  must  have 
been  some  relation  between  Roman  religion  and  Roman 
practical  life.  We  have  the  testimony  of  Polybius,  who, 
in  the  same  passage  in  which  he  treats  of  the  religion  of 
the  Romans,  pays  a  great  tribute  to  their  honesty.  He 
tells  us  that  in  the  Rome  which  he  knew — and  he  knew  it 
well — it  was  a  rare  thing  to  find  a  dishonest  man  in  the 
public  service.  And  he  explains  the  generally  high  moral 
tone  of  the  commonwealth  by  the  fact  that  religion  was 
"  used  as  a  check  on  the  common  people."  We  are 
inclined  to  think,  however,  that  the  character  of  the 
best  Romans  was  influenced  not  so  much  by  the  con- 
ventional religion  of  the  State,  i.e.  by  Jupiter  and  the 
other  deities,  as  by  the  religion  of  the  home.  The  two 
sets  of  ideas  were  utterly  different.  _  The  Roman  family 
was  a  true  imperium  in  imperio.  {  Every  citizen,  as  we 
have  said,  was  priest  in  his  own  house,  and  every  house 
was  a  templeVJ  But  it  was  a  temple  dedicated  to  the 
dead.  The  household  gods,  Lares  and  Penates — for 
they  appear  to  have  been  worshipped  together — were  the 
departed  spirits  of  ancestors  who  continued  to  watch 
over  the  dwelling.  Their  images  surrounded  the  atrium^ 
or  living-room,  in  which  the  family  assembled  to  do 
them  honour  every  day.     The  State  was  excluded  from 

^  "  Templorum  quoque  maiestas  praesentior  et  vox 
Nocte  fere  media  mediamque  audita  per  urbem, 
Litore  ab  oceani  Gallis  venientibus  et  dis 
Officium  vatis  peragentibus  " — (xi.  11 1  sgq.). 


250  THE   NEMESIS   OF   NATIONS 

this  private  chapel,  because  the  State  possessed  its  own 
hearth    and    its    own    Lares    and    Penates.      The    word 
Penates  is  specially  significant,  for  whereas  Lar  means 
generally  a  protecting  spirit  or  overlord,  Penates  means 
"  the    hidden    gods,"    "  the    gods    of   the    interior,"   to 
whom  the  household  looked  for  its  maintenance.    The 
conception   of   the  Roman    home   is    full    of  grandeur. 
The  altar,  Vesta,  round  which  the  images  of  forefathers 
were  grouped  and  before  which  the  family  uttered  its 
prayers,   was    the    real    strength   of   the   State.     It  was 
placed  in  the  centre  of  the  house  in  order  to  be  hidden 
from   the    eyes    of   strangers.     The   fire   which   burned 
upon  it   had   been  burning  for  generations,  and  woe  to 
the   house   whose    sacred    fire   was    allowed   to   go   out. 
This  symbol  of  the   home,  Hestia  among  the  Greeks, 
Vesta  among  the  Romans,  marked  a  great  epoch  in  the 
history  of  man.     We  saw  that  the   early  Aryan   con- 
querors of  India  had  likewise  a  great  god  of  fire,  Agni. 
Vesta  and  Hestia  are  both  connected  with  an  old  Sanskrit 
root  which  means  "  fixed,"  something  that  has  an  un- 
changing   dwelling-place.      Vesta   is   thus   a   humanised 
.J^gni   who   has   come    to   dwell   under  man's  roof-tree.^ 
In  every  sacrifice  the  prayers  were  first  offered  to  the 
'family  fire,  which   was   the   symbol   of  that  fire  of  life 
which   had   been    handed   on   from  generations.  ^  There 
was  thus  an  intense  consciousness  of  the  possession  of  a 
common  family  character  and  of  the  need  of  keeping  it 
pure  and  strong.     It  was  a  wonderful  means  of  com- 
pelling the  individual  to  submit  to  the  ennobling  doctrine 
of  noblesse  oblige.     For  surely  it  is  part  of  the  solemnity 
of  our  lives  that  the  graves  of  our  forefathers  must  be 
the   foundations  of  all   our  building.     When  the  head 
of  a  Roman  household  died  the  images  of  his  ancestors 
were  carried   to  his   funeral,  and  their  noble   acts  were 
recited  in  so   imposing  a  way  that  we  have  been  told 


ROME  251 

that  there  was  no  more  inspiring  spectacle  for  a  young 
Roman  of  noble  ambition.  It  is,  therefore,  in  such 
usages  as  these  that  we  discover  the  real  strength  of 
Roman  religion,  and  we  refuse  to  believe  that  they  had 
no  influence  even  on  the  great  mind  of  a  man  like 
Lucretius.  Old  writers  used  to  say  that  the  Romans 
worshipped  only  success,  because  they  raised  more  altars 
to  Fortune  than  to  any  other  god.  It  would  be  pleasant, 
however,  to  accept  a  modern  view  according  to  which 
Fortuna  had  originally  nothing  to  do  with  windfalls  or 
the  idle  expectation  of  luck.  It  has  been  suggested  that 
Fortuna  is  connected  not  so  much  with^orj  as  with/(7r//V, 
"the  steadfast,"  "the  brave,"  and /<?r//j  came  straight 
from  fero^  which  means  "  to  carry  burdens,"  or  "  to 
endure."  If  so,  our  old  English  proverb,  "  Fortune 
favours  the  brave,"  expresses  the  original  Roman  ideal, 
which  even  the  Romans  forgot.  But  they  had  many 
other  words  whose  braver^  meanings  became  gradually 
obscured.  For  instance,  \their  opes^  riches,  was  only 
another  form  of  opus^  work.—  The  best  individual  optimus 
was  the  man  who  worked  most,  and  he  was  fortunatus 
because  he  was  fortis.  It  is  in  such  words  as  these 
that  we  discover  the  true  biography  of  the  Roman 
greatness. 

17.  Strange  as  it  may  sound,  there  was  the  closest 
relation  between  the  religion  of  the  Roman  household 
and  the  ownership  of  property.  A  hearth,  or  in  other 
words  a  fixed  abode,  was  indispensable  if  the  worship  of 
ancestors  was  to  be  continued.  When  that  worship  ceased 
the  household  was  in,  immediate  peril.  The  real  differ- 
ence between  patrician  and  plebeian  was  that  whereas  the 
former  was  able  the  latter  was  unable  to  trace  his  ancestry. 
Originally,  in  fact,  the  plebeian  was  a  kind  of  Roman 
Sudra,  an  outcast  from  the  clans  {^gentem  non  habet).  If 
he  possessed  a  hearth  there  were   no  images  round   it, 


252  THE   NEMESIS   OF   NATIONS 

and  it  had  no  symbolic  meaning.  The  plebeian  marriage 
was  described  by  the  patricians  in  the  most  contemptuous 
language.^  For  of  all  Roman  institutions  marriage  was 
the  most  sacred.  In  order  to  be  valid  in  the  patrician's 
view,  it  required  to  be  witnessed  at  the  household  altar 
by  the  household  gods.  This  family  altar,  transmitted 
from  one  generation  to  another  and  holding  a  fire  which 
had  been  lit  by  ancestors  who  had  been  dead  for  cen- 
turies, was  the  central  and  the  most  impressive  fact  in 
the  life  of  a  Roman  burgess.  Hence  the  isolation  and 
independence  of  each  hearth  imply  that  we  are  face  to 
face  with  a  society  in  which  private  property  had  been 
already  long  established.  There  was  a  god,  Terminus, 
known  to  the  Greeks  and  in  some  form  even  to  the 
Hindus  as  well  as  to  the  Romans,  and  he  was  the  god 
of  boundaries.  We  may  call  him  the  god  of  property 
— a  modern  god — the  only  god  who  has  received  un- 
interrupted worship.  According  to  old  Roman  law, 
the  man  who  removed  a  boundary  stone  was,  together 
with  his  cattle,  forthwith  to  be  put  to  death.  *  In  the 
Twelve  Tables  the  most  rigorous  provision  is  made 
for  the  security  of  property.  The  owner  of  a  tree, 
for  instance,  is  to  be  allowed  to  gather  the  fruit  which 
has  fallen  into  his  neighbour's  garden.  He  who  sets 
fire  to  a  building  shall  be  burned.  The  night  thief  is 
to  be  killed  in  the  act.  '  The  view,  however,  that  private 
ownership  in  land,  as  well  as  in  other  kinds  of  property, 
was  characteristic  of  every  Aryan  con^munity,  even  in 
its  most  primitive  stage,  is  incorrect.^  .  On  the  contrary, 


^  "  Connubia  promiscua  habent  more  ferarum." 

*  Fustel  de  Coulanges  {La  Cite  Antique^  p.  62)  says  that  "  Les  popu- 
lations de  la  GrC:ce  et  de  l'Italie,^^j-  ranticjutt^  la  plus  haute  out  toujours 
connu  et  pratiqu^  la  propriety  privde.  II  n'est  restd  aucun  souvenir  his- 
torique  d'une  dpoque  ou  la  terre  ait  6xi  commune."  Both  statements,  for 
reasons  already  given,  are  inadmissible.  Cf.  Ihering,  "The  Evolution 
of  the    Aryan,"   p.   48;    Pais,   Storia,  i.   574;    Mommsen,  "History   of 


ROME  253 

co-ownership  appears  to  have  been  the  rule  and  not  the 
exception  among  the  clan  villages  of  the  Aryan  stocks. 
Even  among  the  Latin  tribes  land  was  at  first  held  in 
joint  possession  by  groups.  That  private  wealth  con- 
sisted not  in  land  but  in  cattle  is  held  to  be  proved 
by  many  facts,  but  especially  by  the  fact  that  cattle 
was  made  the  basis  of  value,  and  that  the  word  for  it, 
pecunia^  was  transferred  to  the  symbol  of  exchange.  We 
saw  that  among  the  Aryans  of  India  the  earliest  struggle 
was  for  cattle.  That  was  an  echo  of  nomadic  times 
during  which  there  was  no  tillage.  Although,  of  course, 
cattle  required  pasture,  the  herds  of  a  mobile  community 
must  have  been  driven  together  and  allowed  to  feed  on  a 
temporary  common  land.  The  use  of  the  word  "  com- 
mon "  for  public  ground  in  England  is  a  sign  of  imme- 
morial collective  rights.  As  soon,  however,  as  a  people 
like  the  Latins  became  settled,  the  value  of  the  land  was 
immediately  discovered,  and  as  the  community  added  to 
its  numbers  that  value  was  heightened.  The  man  whose 
family  was  larger,  whose  cattle  multiplied  more  than  his 
neighbour's,  would  require  more  land.  Perhaps  it  was 
felt  that  he  was  usurping  too  large  a  share  of  the  common 
pasture,  and  herein  we  may  discover  a  reason  for  its  dis- 
tribution in  equal  parts.  In  this  manner  the  idea  of  pro- 
perty became  enlarged.  Wealth  was  no  longer  cattle 
merely,  but  cattle  plus  land.  And  yet  for  a  lengthened 
period  even  arable  land  was  tilled  in  common  and  the 
harvest  was  divided.  When  and  for  how  many  reasons 
allotments  were  made  we  have  no  means  of  knowing. 
As  population  increases  the  pressure  of  many  economic 
causes  begins  to  be  felt,  and  communism  becomes  im- 
practicable.    Among  the  Romans  the  tradition  was  that 

Rome,"  i.  85  ;  Maine,  "Ancient  Law,"  p.  260.  In  Questions  Historiques 
the  author  appears  to  be  less  dogmatic.  "  Conclurons  nous  qu'il  n'y 
eut  jamais  nulle  part  aucune  communaute  de  terre  ?    Nullement"  (p.  115). 


254  THE   NEMESIS   OF   NATIONS 

Romulus,  the  founder  of  the  city,  had  given  about  an 
acre  and  a  quarter  of  land  to  each  burgess.     But  it  is 
supposed  that  this  distribution  referred  only  to  building 
ground,  and  that  the  domain  lands  continued  to  be  ad- 
ministered collectively.     In  any  case,  the  separate  owner- 
ship of  house  property  meets  us  at  the  foundation  of  the 
city  (753  B.C.),  and  no  doubt  it  existed  long  before  that 
date.     There  is  a  remarkable  provision  in  the  Twelve 
Tables  in  which  must  have  been  incorporated  much  old 
Latin  usage  along  with  new  ideas.     In  Table  VII.  it  is 
enacted  that  a  space  of  two  and  a  half  feet  must  be  left 
between  every  house.     In  other  words,  the  great  era  of 
Roman  individualism  had  begun.     Each   man  was  lord 
in  his  own   house,  and  the  images  of  his  ancestors  were 
gradually  accumulated  round  the  hearth  fire.     We  shall 
probably  not  be  wrong  if  wc  suppose  that  the  choice  of 
building   materials   had   also  an  influence  in   developing 
ideas  on  property.     The  substitution  of  houses  of  brick 
and  of  stone  for  the  frail  huts  of  wood  and  straw  of  an 
earlier  time  must  have  brought  a  sense  of  permanence. 
Such  buildings  could  be  occupied  by  one  generation  after 
another,  and  at  last  it  would  be  felt  that  without  property 
the  family  would  perish.     The  argument  against  certain 
kinds  of  socialism  has  thus  a  deep  historical  basis.     The 
more  durable  materials  were  perhaps  at  first  used  in  con- 
structing the  temples  of  the  gods,  which  were  the  pro- 
perty of  the   State.      For,    as   we    saw,    the    State    also 
possessed  its  Lares  and  Penates,  who,  together  with  Ter- 
minus, watched  over  its  lands  and  its  harvests.     But  if 
those   gods  were  benign  they  would   grant   increase   of 
property  and   of  revenue.     Terminus  would   at  least  be 
willing    to  have   his    boundary  stones    moved  outwards 
to  become  the  marks  and  frontiers  of  an  ever-widening 
area  of  harvest  land.     Here,  therefore,  we  find^  the  re- 
lation between  the  internal  and  the  external  history  of 


ROME  255 

a  State  like  Rome.  It  was  natural  that  the  founders  of 
those  early  commonwealths  should  have  been  tempted  to 
extend  the  limits  of  a  territory  which  they  would  ulti- 
mately share.  It  was  this  idea  which  really  lay  behind 
the  Roman  conquest.  The  public  land  was  called  ager 
Romanus,  the  land  of  the  Romans.  In  the  olden  time 
it  comprised  only  a  small  area.  But  gradually  it  grew 
and  grew  until,  after  a  series  of  successful  wars,  all 
Italy  became  the  Roman  land,  and  then  all  the  world. 
The  history  of  Rome  is  nothing  but  the  history  of  two 
great  parallel  struggles:  (i)  the  struggle  of  the  State 
to  increase  its  domains — for,  after  all.  Empire  is  only 
property  on  an  immense  scale;  and  (2)  the  struggle 
of  the  sons  of  the  State  against  each  other  to  secure 
a  share  of  that  property. 

18.  No  people  ever  had  clearer  ideas  on  convey- 
ancing than  the  Romans ;  although,  indeed,  it  must  be 
confessed  that  the  chief  part  of  their  conveyancing  was 
done  on  the  battlefield  and  by  the  sword.  There  was  at 
least  no  hypocrisy  in  their  theory  of  property.  The 
lance  or  spear  was  the  symbol  of  possession,  and  it  was 
actually  brought  during  litigation  into  the  law  courts. 
The  Roman  felt  no  scruple  in  attacking  the  property  of 
his  enemy,^  and  he  showed  equal  vigour  in  defending 
his  own.  With  that  startling  brevity  of  language  in 
which  the  force  of  Roman  character  is  often  made  almost 
visible,  the  early  law  informs  us  that  "  against  every 
enemy  the  right  of  possession  is  eternal."  ^  Property 
was  then,  as  indeed  it  still  is,  so  obviously  the  result 
of  successful  combat  that  the  Latin  word  for  it, 
mancipium^  means  "  that  which  has  been  seized  by  the 

^  "  Maxime  enim  sua  esse  credebant  quse  ex  hostibus  cepissent." 

2  "  Adversus    hostem    aeterna    auctoritas "  (Twelve   Tables,   vi.  5). 

The  legal  interpretation  of  the  phrase  is  that  no  foreigner  shall  acquire 

title  by  possession  to  the  property  of  a  Roman  citizen. 


256  THE   NEMESIS   OF   NATIONS 

hand."  And  we  are  startled  to  find  that  that  too  was 
the  technical  word  for  slave_  The  official  title  of  the 
Roman  people,  Populus  Romanus  Cluiritesque^  or  Populus 
Romanus  Quiri/ium,  has  been  understood  by  many  writers 
to  mean  a  community  held  together  by  the  spear.  And 
the  spear  was  not  only  the  symbol  of  property.  It 
played  its  part  in  the  marriage  ceremony  as  a  sign  that 
the  future  husband  had  captured  his  bride,  and  that  the 
future  father  would  be  omnipotent  in  his  own  home. 
It  was  this  sense  of  the  need  of  rigorous  and  definite 
relationships  in  all  the  affairs  of  human  life  which  made 
the  Romans  such  masters  in  law  that  the  world  has 
since  been  living  on  their  maxims.  Imitators,  and 
otten  poor  imitators,  in  the  region  of  aesthetics,  in  art, 
in  literature,  and  even  in  religion,  they  were  deeply 
original  in  the  creative  instincts  of  practical  life.  It 
would  perhaps  be  too  much  to  say  that  the  submission 
of  the  individual  to  the  State,  which  was  involuntary  in 
Babylon,  became  voluntary  in  Rome,  since  Rome  suffered 
from  a  deep  political  unrest.  But  we  must  distinguish 
between  a  Roman's  conception  of  the  State  and  his 
impatience  with  particular  governments.  It  was  pre- 
cisely the  prolonged  inner  struggle  which  developed  his 
political  instincts  and  made  him  capable  of  governing 
himself  and  other  men.  It  is  easy,  however,  and  perhaps 
too  easy,  to  idealise  the  Roman  character.  The  opinion 
of  Montesquieu,  that  Roman  ambition  was  centred  not 
on  wealth  but  on  glory,  is  a  rhetorical  overstatement.^ 
r Apart  from  the  fact  that  the  soldiers  of  Sulla  and  of 
Caesar,  like  the  soldiers  of  Napoleon,  fought  not  so 
much  for  a  country  as  for  a  leader  and  for  plunder, 
we  detect  even  in  the  earliest  policy  of  Rome,  when 
none  but  her  own  burghers  formed  the  army,  as  much 

1  Considerations  sur  les  Causes  de  la  Grandeur  des  Romains  et  de  leur 
Decadence^  p.  19. 


ROME  257 

"  avarice  "  as  in  the  policy  of  CarthageTJ  For  Rome,  like 
Carthage,   was   a   commercial   State,   and   the   wealth   of 
both  was  the  fruit  of  aggression.     No  people  ever  made 
shrewder  use  of  their  enemies   ahd  of  their  allies  than 
the  Romans.     They  never  carried   on  two  wars  at  one 
time,  and  when  it  was  convenient  they  converted  allies 
into  enemies  and  enemies  into  allies.     They  knew  how 
to  perpetuate  feuds  between  powers  which  in  combina- 
tion would   have  become  too  formidable.     They  posed 
as  the  protectors  of  Greece  against  Carthage.     As  soon, 
however,  as  Carthage  was  ruined  Greece  was  attacked. 
There  is  nothing  so   logical  as  the  calendar  of  Roman 
conquests.     It  contains  a  chronology  of  inevitable  events. 
Greece  was  conquered,  and  immediately  made  an  avenue 
towards   the  East.     For  when  in  despair   the   ^^tolians 
called   for    help   to   that   Asia  which    Greeks   had  van- 
quished, Rome  transferred  the  battlefield  from  Europe 
to  Asia  as  easily  as   she   had   transferred  it  from  Italy 
to    Africa.       Antiochus    was    crushed    by    the    help    of 
Rhodes,   and   then   Rhodes   was   crushed.     One  by   one 
the  peoples  of  the  world  were  drawn  into  the  wide  net 
of  dominion.     And  when  we  remember  that  a  rehearsal 
of  this  empire  had  taken  place  in  Italy,  which  had  been 
for  centuries  the  military  manoeuvre  ground  of  Rome, 
we  become  aware  of  the  vast  continuity  of  Roman  policy. 
In  Italy  alone  Rome  signed  more  than  a  hundred  treaties, 
and  doubtless  they  were  all  deposited  in  the  shrine  of 
Fides  Romana  on  the  Capitol.     Yet  in  the  end  it  was 
as  if  they  had  never  been  made.     No  doubt  the  more 
immediate  Latin  communities  received  special  privileges 
from  their  union  with  Rome,  but  union  was  compulsory. 
And  just  as  all  the  dialects  of  the  Italian  peoples  gave 
way  before  the  dialect  of  Rome,  so  their  political  systems 
were  one  by  one  expunged.     It  was  really  this  conflict 
in  Italy,  and  especially  with  men  of  their  own  race  like 

R 


258  THE   NEMESIS   OF   NATIONS 

the  Samnites,  which  created  the  military  strength  of  the 
Romans.  The  greater  the  difficulty  which  they  found 
in  defeating  an  enemy,  the  more  they  considered  him 
worthy  to  be  absorbed  by  them.  It  has  been  said  that, 
like  Great  Britain,  Rome  owed  her  power  to  this  in- 
corporation of  diverse  virile  national  elements.  The 
struggles  between  Normans  and  Anglo-Saxons,  between 
Anglo-Saxons  and  the  Scotch,  the  Welsh,  and  the  Irish, 
were,  indeed,  similar  to  those  which  raged  between 
Rome  and  her  Italian  enemies.  It  is  very  remarkable 
that  whereas  Rome  was  occupied  during  five  centuries 
in  the  conquest  of  Italy,  her  conquest  of  the  world,  as 
Polybius  points  out  with  astonishment,  was  completed 
in  less  than  fifty-three  years:  But  those  five  centuries 
involved  the  sternest  education.  The  Roman  Legion 
may  have  been  founded  on  a  Doric  model,  but  the 
Romans  utilised  the  military  science  of  the  Greeks 
much  as  the  Japanese  to-day  have  utilised  the  civil  and 
military  methods  of  Western  civilisation.  The  training 
of  the  Roman  foot-soldiers  was  very  arduous  and  almost 
crushing,  but  it  made  them  so  formidable  that  they 
were  considered  to  be  equal,  man  for  man,  to  fully 
equipped  cavalry.  In  the  manoeuvres  during  peace  they 
were  compelled  to  carry  arms  double  the  weight  of  those 
which  they  carried  in  war,  and  they  displayed  extra- 
ordinary endurance  on  the  march.  And  yet  it  was  only 
in  minor  battles  on  the  soil  of  Italy,  in  skirmishes 
between  Romans,  Samnites,  and  Etruscans  regarding 
such  matters  as  the  possession  of  salt-pools  and  the 
traffic  in  salt,  which  in  the  picturesque  phrase  of  the 
day  was  called  "  the  holy  ice  of  Neptune,"  it  was  in 
the  hand-to-hand  combat  of  burghers  fighting  for  a 
territory  not  larger  than  a  parish,  that  the  Roman 
military  genius  and  valour  were  first  displayed. 

Vi^.  Whereas  in  her  foreign  policy  Athens  supported 


ROME 


259 


all  the  democratic  States,  Rome,  on  the  contrary,  sup- 
ported the  aristocracies.  She  profited  by  the  revolutions 
in  rival  cities,  and  in  spite  of  her  own  war  of  factions 
her  greater  stability  attracted  powerful  families  like  the 
Sabine  Claudii,  who  threw  in  their  lot  with  her.  Veil, 
once  her  most  dangerous  neighbour,  overthrew  its  oli- 
garchy, and  Rome  attacked  it.  The  other  Etruscan 
oligarchies  left  Veii  in  the  lurch,  and  Veii  fell.  The 
same  thing  happened  in  Capua.  Even  in  Carthage  the 
aristocracy  was  eager  for  peace  with  Rome,  and  actually 
ready  for  submission.  And  when,  after  Carthage  had 
been  humbled,  the  Romans  were  free  to  march  through 
Greece,  the  Hellenic  aristocracies  likewise  opened  their 
gates  to  them.  No  more  striking  testimony  could 
have  been  paid  to  the  administrative  ability  of  the  Roman 
Senate.  But  this  foreign  policy  was  only  the  counter- 
part of  a  policy  pursued  at  home  with  relentless  per- 
sistence. The  Senate  which  was  willing  to  ally  itself 
with  the  Senates  of  foreign  nations  was  determined  to  be 
master  of  its  own  mob.  Hence  those  perpetual  certamina 
domi^  or  domestic  quarrels,  to  which  Livy  looks  back 
with  a  kind  of  retrospective  anxiety.  A  dogmatic 
pronouncement,  however,  on  the  morality  of  Roman 
politics  would  be  misleading ;  for  the  political  history  of 
Rome,  as  of  every  other  State,  is  full  of  contradiction. 
There  were  great  men  and  great  patriots  in  the  aris- 
tocracy. Only  an  ignorant  demagogism,  for  instance, 
will  prevent  us  admitting  that  many  a  time  the  action  of 
the  Senate  was  full  of  patriotism,  and  that  without  the 
Senate  there  would  have  been  no  Rome.  Those  patri- 
cians who  supposed  themselves  to  be  senators  by  divine 
right  were,  after  all,  often,  although  not  always,  worthy 
of  their  immense  privileges.  Many  of  them  fought  the 
battles  of  the  State.  By  the  mere  fact  that  they  were  the 
wealthiest  men  they  were  compelled  to  take  their  places 


26o  THE   NEMESIS   OF   NATIONS 

in  the  classis — that  is  to  say,  in  the  four  first  ranks  of  the 
Roman  Legion.  And,  on  the  other  hand,  when  at  last 
the  people  overcame  the  Senate  we  cannot  absolve  them 
or  their  formidable  representatives,  the  tribunes,  from 
the  equal  charge  of  proposing  mere  class  legislation...  At 
first  a  weapon  of  defence,  the  tribuneship  soon  became 
a  weapon  of  attack.  Not  content  with  the  compromise 
that  one  consul  should  be  a  patrician  and  the  other  a 
plebeian,  the  plebs  insisted  that  both  should  be  plebeians, 
and  that  the  censorship,  the  prastorship,  and  the  quaes- 
torship  should  likewise  be  taken  out  of  the  hands  of 
the  patricians.  It  is  as  if  a  modern  Labour  Party,  or  any 
other  single  group,  were  to  monopolise  the  government 
of  a  modern  State,  and  to  seize  a  kind  of  political 
throne. 

20.  The  political  history  of  Rome  during  the  King- 
ship, the  Republic,  and  the  Empire  is  the  history  of  three 
attempts  to  combine  forces  which  were  organically  in- 
capable of  combination.  There  is  no  truth  in  the 
paradox  of  Machiavelli  ^  that  it  was  this  disunion  which 
saved  Roman  liberty.  For  if  that  were  true,  since  the 
disunion  never  ceased,  that  liberty  should  never  have  been 
lost.  As  we  shall  see  presently,  it  was  never  even  gained 
by  the  vast  population  by  whose  industry  Rome  subsisted. 
Moreover,  within  the  restricted  sphere  in  which  liberty 
was  enjoyed  it  was  always  in  danger.  No  doubt  the 
creation  of  tribunes  was  the  result  of  the  long  duel 
between  the  patricians  and  the  plebs,  but  it  was  precisely 
that  duel  which  brought  on  the  political  deadlock  which 
ruined  the  State.  For  on  the  top  of  it  came  that  series 
of  military  adventurers,  such  as  Marius,  Sulla,  and 
Pompey,  who  prepared  the  way  for  the  tyranny.  Those 
inner  oscillations  were  necessary  for  the  political  edu- 
cation of  the  Roman  as  of  every  other  people,  but  we 

^  Discorsit  i.  3. 


ROME  261 

must  be  careful  in  using  the  word  liberty  in  connection 
with  a  system  in  which  so  few  men  were  free.  During 
the  Kingship  the  task  was  to  discover  an  equilibrium 
between  king,  Senate,  and  people,  but  by  means  of  a 
revolution  which  was  essentially  aristocratic  the  Kingship 
was  overthrown.  During  the  Republic  the  task  was 
to  make  the  discord  betv/een  the  Senate  and  the  people  ^ 
an  accord,  but  even  after  the  Senate  had  ceased  to  be 
exclusively  composed  of  patricians,  which  was  probably 
about  400  B.c.,^  no  accord  came.  The  struggle  was 
prolonged  by  a  tenacious  aristocracy  long  after  many 
of  its  most  powerful  families  had  become  extinct.  It  is 
a  remarkable  fact  that  out  of  fifty-three  gentes  whose 
members  had  exercised  magisterial  office  in  the  fifth 
century,  only  twenty-nine  in  the  fourth  and  only  sixteen 
in  the  second  century  had  representatives  in  the  Senate,  i 
Now,  this  fact  had  important  results  for  the  plebs.  All 
patricians,  or  cives  Optimo  jure,  had  originally  dependent 
upon  them  great  numbers  of  "  clients."  Those  men 
and  their  families  were  descended  either  from  slaves 
manumitted  in  an  earlier  generation,  or  from  foreigners 
or  poor  citizens  who  had  placed  themselves  under  the 
protection  of  a  powerful  house.  But  when  the  house 
had  fallen  the  great  number  of  its  dependants  were 
thrown  upon  their  own  resources.  The  lower  ranks  of 
Roman  society  were  thus  receiving,  as  indeed  the  lower 
ranks  of  every  modern  society  also  receive,  a  continual 
detritus  from  the  higher  levels.  The  view  according  to 
which  the  plebs  were  the  descendants  of  the  various 
Italian  peoples  who  had  been  conquered  by  Rome  is  not 
inconsistent  with  the  theory  that  their  numbers  were 
increased  by  the  adhesion  of  impoverished  clients.     The 

1  The  Latin  vjord  populus  embraced  patricians  as  well  as  plebeians 
but  we  use  the  word  in  the  modern  sense  to  include  the  whole  nation. 
*  Willems,  Le  Senat,  i.  37. 


262  THE   NEMESIS   OF   NATIONS 

day  arrived,  indeed,  when  the  political  interests  of  both 
parties  became  united.  And  yet,  although  the  people 
steadily  gained  certain  rights,  organised  themselves  under 
the  presidency  of  their  tribunes,  abolished  the  old  law 
according  to  which  marriage  between  a  patrician  and  a 
plebeian  was  forbidden,  appointed  their  own  magistrates, 
forced  an  entrance  into  the  Senate,  and  exercised  legal 
and  legislative  power  in  their  assemblies,  their  victory  did 
nothing  to  solve  the  social  and  political  problems  of 
Rome.  In  the  end  patricians  and  plebeians,  who  had 
not  known  how  to  co-operate,  alike  succumbed  to  a 
military  dictatorship  which  was  the  first  stage  of  the 
Empire.  And  then  at  last,  during  the  Empire,  there 
was  a  return  to  monarchy  in  such  a  way  that  a  republican 
system  which,  in  some  respects,  had  been  characteristically 
European  made  way  for  the  old  system  of  Asia. 

2  1.  We  are  not  here  concerned,  however,  with  the 
politics  of  Rome.  In  their  general  outline  many  great 
historians  have  made  them  sufficiently  clear.  And,  after 
all,  what  does  it  matter  whether  the  tribunes,  who  were 
at  first  excluded  from  the  Senate,  were  later  allowed  to 
sit  on  a  bench  near  the  door,  and  then  at  last  on  a 
bench  in  the  very  middle  of  that  holy  of  holies  of  the 
capitalists  ?  Even  although  their  triumph  had  been 
greater  than  it  was,  it  could  have  done  nothing  to  save 
Rome.  In  fact,  the  internal  history  of  Rome  provides 
the  best  instance  of  the  sterility  of  politics.  A  political 
agitation  which  had  lasted  for  seven  hundred  and  fifty 
years  ended  in  the  extinction  of  the  system  for  which 
the  struggle  had  been  made.  I^e  are  told  by  one  who 
knew  everything  about  Roman  politics  that  even  during 
the  Republic  the  people  possessed  little  power.  Theo- 
retically they  could  not  hoH  a  public  meeting  without 
permission  of  the   Senate.^  And  St.  Augustine   main- 

^  Cicero,  De  Rep.^  ii.  32. 


ROME  263 

tained  that  Rome  had  never  been  a  republic  at  all,  be- 
cause justice  had  had  no  place  in  it.-^  If,  therefore, 
justice  lived  a  precarious  life  even  on  the  level  of 
recognised  rights,  what  strange  chaos  of  wrong  must 
have  existed  among  the  slaves  who  were  crowded  upon 
the  lowest  strata  of  the  State  ?  In  other  words,  the 
political  struggle  went  on  above  the  heads  of  the 
slaves,  and  no  matter  what  the  issue  might  have  been, 
it  is  certain  that  it  would  not  have  brought  them  any 
shadow  of  rights.  The  Roman,  like  the  Athenian  de- 
mocracy, was  hostile  to  the  claims  of  the  slaves.  This 
fact,  therefore,  tends  to  diminish  our  sympathy  with 
the  plebs,  whose  political  shibboleths,  important  as  they 
doubtless  are  in  the  history  of  liberty,  have  been  re- 
echoed with  sufficient  enthusiasm.  ^After  all,  the  plebs 
were  freemen.  The  gulf  which  separated  them  from 
the  slaves  was  impassable,  compared  with  the  more 
easily  bridged  distance  between  the  plebs  and  the  patri- 
cians.]\  A  national  crisis,  a  foreign  war^^^_aj;ising_of  the 
slayes  served  To  unite  fKe  tw"Q75rd£rs.  They  might 
quarrel  over  the  adjustment  of  their  respective  rights, 
but  they  were  both  determined  to  grant  no  rights  to 
the  slaves.  A  comfortable  plebs  would  thus  have  been 
only  a  paltry  result  after  centuries  of  agitation,  especi- 
ally when  beneath  the  plebs  there  would  have  continued 
to  exist  a  very  unhappy  and  uncomfortable  servile  popu- 
lation. The  shrewdest  minds  had,  indeed,  early  per- 
ceived where  the  real  problem  lay.  The  agrarian  laws, 
although  proposed  in  the  interest  o£the  plebs,  were  of 
the  utmost  importance  to  the  slaves]  For 'the  "aTtempt  \  -^^'^  ,-, 
to  resist~tKe~vast~concentration  of  land  in  the  handTof  V-^-(i/J>^-«:<m, 
a'Tew  caHtalists1Hv^Ive3"lHeTestrictron  of  servile  labour. 

^  "  Nunquam  illam  {i.e.  Rome)  fuisse  rempublicam,  quia  nunquam  in 
ea  fuit  vera  iustitia''  {De  Civ.  Dei.,  ii.  21).  St.  Augustine  is  here  quoting 
a  lost  passage  of  Cicero. 


264  THE   NEMESIS   OF   NATIONS 

'he  famous  Licinian  law,  supposed  to  have  been  passed 
about  367  B.C.,  enacted  not  merely  that  no  one  should 
be  allowed  to  possess  more  than  three  hundred  acres  of 
land,  but  that  the  employer  of  labour  should  be  com- 
pelled to  reduce  the  number  of  his  slaves  in  favour  of 
freemen.  Now,  it  is  very  remarkable  that  the  period 
luring  which  this  law  was  enforced  was  the  most  flour- 
ishing period  of  Roman  agriculture.  It  was  obeyed  by 
all  the  best  leaders  of  the  Republic — Manius  Curius, 
Fabius,  and  the  two  Scipios.  That  was  also  the  period 
of  Rome's  greatest  vigour.  POn  the  other  hand,  when 
the  Licinian  laws,  owing  to  tTie  increasing  corruption 
introduced  by  foreign  conquest,  were  allowed  to  fall 
into  abeyance  Roman  agriculture  declined.  J  Thus  the 
struggle  of  the  smaller  proprietors  against  the  great 
landlords  was  a  thoroughly  national  struggle.  But  it 
was  more.  Although,  no  doubt,  it  was  the  movement 
only  of  a  single  class  determined  upon  the  maintenance 
of  its  own  interests,  it  was  nevertheless  unconsciously  a 
struggle  on  behalf  of  the  slaves.  The  land,  even  in  the 
days  of  the  Republic,  was  in  the  hands  of  a  capitalistic 
group.^  Foreign_co^n£uest_hjLd_jio__doubt  brought  a 
great  influx  of  wealth,  but  also  a_great  THKux  of  slaves. 
The  slave-market  was  overstocked.  Labour  had  thus 
become  so  cheap  that  the  freeman  was  no  longer  able 
to  compete  against  the  slave,  and  the  capitalist  made 
sure  that  only  slaves  were  employed.  For  whereas  free- 
men were  liable  to  military  service,  slaves  were  exempt. 
Their  ernpToyment,  thereforepmeant  an  enormous  gain 
to  the  capitalist ;  but  the  greater  their  number,  and  the 
cheaper  their  price,  the  worse  their  treatment. 

22.  Here  again,  however,  we  are  met  by  the  fact  that 
the  triumph  of  the   small  landowners  would  not   have 
solved  the  economic  problem  of  Rome.    The  slave-market 
^  Appian,  Bell.  Civ,,  Bk.  I.  ch.  i. 


ROME  26s 

would  still  have  been  full.     The  struggle  for  the  land, 
indeed,  like  the  struggle  for  liberty,  was  not  altogether 
so  heroic  as  it  seems.     For,  to  begin  with,  in  order  that 
Romans  should  possess  it,  whole  nations  had  been  dis- 
possessed  all  over    the  world.     We  hear,   for  instance, 
that  six  Roman  grandees  owned  half  of  the  Africa  which 
was  known  to  Nero's  age.^     The  transformation  of  the 
world    into    the    ager  Romanus    had    involved    the    dis- 
placement   of   countless    thousands    of    human    beings. 
And  besides,  even  although  the  land  had  been  divided 
never   so  justly  between   patricians    and    plebs,   not    an 
inch   would   have  been  allotted   to  the  slaves   who,  by 
forced    labour    upon    it,    had    increased    and    in    some 
cases   had  created  its    value.      We    see,   therefore,   that 
in  order  to  understand  the  real  condition  of  Rome  it  is 
necessary  to  disentangle  her  social  from  her  purely  poli- 
tical history.     Not  in  the  two  upper  layers,  but  on  the 
lowest   layer  of  her  society  are  to  be  found  the  deeper 
causes  of  her  decay.     It  was  tragic  that,  both  under  the 
Republic  and  under  the  Empire,  the  middle   class  was 
annihilated,   and   that    the  bourgeois   became   a  beggar. 
But  it  is  not  by  the  study  of  an  arid  political  struggle 
that  we  shall  know  the  real  reason  why  in  Rome  men 
were    cheap    and    wheat    was    dear.     Moreover,    in    the 
study  of  the  lowest  strata   of  Roman  society   we    dis- 
cover the  real  continuity  of  Rome.   [Whereas  the  poli- 
tical structure  of  the  State  was  frequently  and  violently 
changed,  its  social  basis  remained  permanent,  and  created 
during  centuries  the  same  economic  results.     The  only 
difference  between  the  earlier  and  the  later  period  was 
that   as    the   State  grew  older  and  more   luxurious    the 
number  of  slaves  was  enormously  increasedTJ 

23.  Rome  drew   her  slaves    from    two  sources,  one 
internal   and  the   other   external,   but   during   her    early 

1  Pliny,  N.  H.,  xviii.  7. 


i66  THE   XEMESIS  OF   NATIONS 

period  neither  of  those  sources  was  prolific.  Since  her 
territory  was  limited  she  had  little  need  of  slaves-  For 
she  was  practically  surrounded  by  a  ring  of  hostile  cities, 
and  until  she  had  burst  the  ring  she  found  it  difficult  to 
support  even  her  own  freemen.  The  land,  divided  into 
allotments,  was  tilled  by  the  farmer  and  his  sons.  But  it 
is  precisely  within  the  Roman  family  that  the  signs  of 
slavery  are  first  visible.  The  authority  of  the  father 
(j>atria  potestas)  was  so  unlimited  that  it  involved  the 
power  of  life  and  death  over  his  offspring.  According 
to  the  early  law,  he  possessed  the  right  not  merely  of 
enslaving  his  son,  or  of  selling  him  as  a  slave,  but  of 
killing  him.  Even  when  the  son  had  reached  a  high 
social  position  and  had  become  a  public  ser\'ant  the 
parental  control  by  no  means  ceased.  And  so  far  at 
least  as  the  statute  law  was  concerned  this  extraordinary 
authority  remained  unchallenged  until  the  time  of  Alex- 
ander Severus.  It  is  little  wonder,  therefore,  that  a 
Roman  jurist  remarked  that  in  comparison  with  the 
Romans  no  people  ever  possessed  such  a  power  over  their 
sons-^  Like  the  slave,  the  son  was  incapable  of  holding 
property.  If  his  father  had  sold  him  and  the  new 
master  had  bestowed  freedom  upon  him,  it  was  still  in 
the  father's  power  to  sell  him  twice  again.  Even  as  late 
as  the  reign  of  Constantine  a  parent  in  destitution  was 
permitted  to  dispose  of  his  new-bom  infant,  especially 
when  the  price  received  was  required  to  pay  the  im- 
perial taxes.  In  other  words,  the  children  of  a  Roman 
father  formed  part  of  the  inventory  of  his  property. 

24,  Owing  to  the  law  of  debt,  however,  an  even 
more  serious  wastage  occurred  in  the  ranks  of  Roman 
freemen.  If  after  a  delay  of  thirty  days  a  debt  remained 
unpaid,  the  debtor  practically   became   the  slave  of  his 

*  "  Fere  enim  nulli  alii  sunt  homines  qui  taJem  in  filios  suos  habeant 
potestatem,  qualem  nos  habemas"  (Gai^  L  55). 


ROME  267 

creditor  until  the  debt  was  liquidated.     He  was  taken 
before  the  magistrate,   and  if   no  surety  {lindex)   came 
forward    to  guarantee   the  amount,   the    bankrupt   was 
forthwith  removed  to  the  creditor's  house,   imprisoned 
there,  chained,  and  loaded  with  shackles  weighing  not 
more  than  fifteen  pounds.     Thereafter  he  was  publicly 
exposed  during  three  consecutive  market-days,  and  the 
amount  of  the  debt  was  declared.     But  if  his  friends 
still  refused  to  buy  him  off  he  was  either  killed  or  sold 
as  a   slave.     It   seems,   however,  that   the   creditor  was 
compelled    to    sell    the    insolvent    person    "beyond    the 
Tiber,"  since  no  man  who  had  been  a  Roman  citizen  was 
to  become  irrevocably  a  slave  on  his  native  soil.     Never- 
theless, citizens  who  had  been  handed  over  or  adjudged 
{addicti)  to  their  creditors   to  work  off  debts  gradually 
sunk  into  the  last  stages  of  subjection.     In  the  case  of 
a  man  who  was  in  debt  all  round,  his  creditors  were  per- 
mitted by  the  ancient  code  to  cut  him  in  pieces  and  thus 
share    their   vengeance.^      Some    modern    writers    have 
doubted  whether    this    barbarous   law   was   ever   earned 
out,  but  in  a  fierce  age  such  reprisals  cannot  have  been 
uncommon.     Later,  no  doubt,  it  was  found  to  be  more 
profitable  to  sell  the  debtor,  and  his  price  was  divided 
among  the  creditors.      But  it  was  precisely  the  rigour 
of  those   primitive   laws  which  was  responsible  for  the 
early  tumults  in  Rome.     The  main  causes  which  created 
ancient   cannot   have   been    different    from   those  which 
create  modem  poverty,  but  in  early  Rome  one  cause  was 
specially  active,  and  it  struck  at  the  roots   of  national 
well-being.     The  burgher  was  called  upon  to  fight  his 
city's   battles   often   at   his   own   expense.      For   he  was 
called  away  at  the  moment  when  he  should  have  been 
tilling  his  own  land,  and  this   enforced   neglect   of  his 
private    fortune    drove  him  to   seek  aid   from   usurers. 

"^  Twelve  TaUes,  m.  6. 


268  THE  NEMESIS   OF   NATIONS 

When  he  returned  from  war  it  was  frequently  to  find 
himself  in  debt,  and  he  was  compelled  to  mortgage  first 
his  land  and  next  his  family,  and  at  last  himself.  Hence 
it  is  easy  to  understand  the  words  of  Livy  when  he  tells 
us  that  such  men  felt  that  their  real  enemies  were  within 
the  walls  of  Rome.^  That  the  state  of  affairs  was  in- 
tolerable is  proved  by  the  fact  that  those  who  had  been 
momentarily  set  free  to  take  part  in  a  war  were  upon 
their  return  immediately  handed  over  to  their  creditors. 
It  was  in  this  manner  that  a  process  of  attrition  went  on 
in  the  ranks  of  the  burghers,  and  that  a  discontented 
plebeian  population  began  to  form  the  majority  in  the 
State.  The  disproportion  in  fortunes  became  inevitable. 
No  doubt  the  Lex  Poetelia  (326  B.C.)  was  a  great  reform, 
since,  in  order  to  save  the  freedom  of  a  bankrupt  citizen, 
it  was  enacted  that  not  his  person  but  his  property  was 
to  be  seized.  Moreover,  in  the  case  where  the  debtor 
was  absolutely  insolvent  the  manner  and  the  duration  of 
his  enslavement  were  henceforth  to  be  regulated  by  jury. 
We  do  not  know,  however,  how  far  this  law  was 
retrospective.  Poverty  had  already  become  hereditary. 
Whole  families  had  been  mortgaged.  Men  lingered  a 
lifetime  in  working  oflF  a  debt,  and  the  system  was  so 
profitable  to  the  creditor  that  it  was  in  his  interest 
that  the  liquidation  should  be  postponed.  For  as  soon 
as  satisfaction  had  been  given  the  bankrupt  was  once 
more  a  freeman,  and  his  land  was  his  own  again. 

25.  We  thus  see  that  from  the  beginning  the  three 
great  problems  of  the  Roman  conquest,  the  Roman  land, 
and  Roman  slavery  were  intricately  entangled,  and  as 
Rome  grew  greater  the  entanglement  grew  worse.  To 
those  Romans  who  had  lost  their  rights  or  whose  rights 
were  diminished  there  was  added  a  vast  servile  popula- 

*  "  Fremebant  se  foris   pro  libertate  et  imperio  dimicantes  domi  a 
civibus  captos  et  oppresses  esse"  (ii.  23). 


ROME  269 

tion  recruited  from  the  prisoners  of  war,  who,  if  they 
could  not  ransom  themselves,  became  slaves.  Mommsen 
points  out  that  the  "glorious  victories"  of  the  Republic 
brought  wealth.  The  victories  may  have  been  "  glorious," 
but  the  wealth  was  fictitious.  The  revenue  increased, 
but  the  small  farmers  disappeared,  and  the  way  was  pre- 
pared for  omnipotent  territorial  lords,  and  for  an  agrarian 
and  industrial  system  which,  wholly  dependent  on  the 
labour  of  slaves,  was  the  main  cause  of  the  ruin  of  Italy. 
26.  It  was  Italy  which  was  Rome's  first  great  slave- 
market,  for  the  Romans  did  not  scruple  to  place  the 
yoke  upon  men  of  their  own  stock.  In  the  Volscian 
war  four  thousand  inhabitants  of  a  single  town  were 
sold  as  slaves,  and  when  the  Samnites  were  defeated  at 
Aquilonia  the  sale  of  more  than  thirty  thousand  of  them 
helped  to  fill  Rome's  war-chest.  In  Epirus  alone  Paulus 
iEmilius  took  one  hundred  and  fifty  thousand  prisoners, 
who  were  put  up  to  auction,  and  the  proceeds  were 
divided  among  the  soldiers.  Slave  merchants  followed 
the  armies,  and  sales  on  the  battlefield  were  superintended 
by  the  military  quaestors,  who  represented  the  State.  It 
often  happened  that,  owing  to  the  number  of  prisoners, 
slaves  were  cheap.  For  instance,  after  the  victories  of 
Lucullus  in  Pontus  the  prisoners  were  sold  for  only 
four  drachmae.  If  we  take  the  drachma  as  equal  to  the 
Roman  denarius,  that  price  was  perhaps  about  four  francs 
each.  But  the  slave  merchant  on  his  arrival  at  Rome 
was  able  to  resell  the  slave  at  a  great  profit.  Often, 
indeed,  the  chief  interest  in  a  war  centred  upon  the  kind 
of  slaves  who  would  be  brought  to  Rome.  Thus  we 
find  Cicero  in  a  letter  to  Atticus  complaining  that  the 
slaves  whom  Caesar  would  lead  captive  from  Britain 
would  be  illiterate.  Although  Caesar  was  content  with 
only  a  few  slaves  for  his  own  body-servants,  it  was  often 
his  boast  that  after  his  successful  battles  he  had  disposed 


270  THE   NEMESIS   OF   NATIONS 

of  thousands  of  slaves.  On  one  occasion  in  Gaul  he  sold 
as  many  as  fifty-three  thousand.  It  would  be  tedious, 
however,  to  enumerate  the  hordes  of  captives  who  were 
put  up  to  auction  by  victorious  Roman  generals.  Rome 
inherited  the  slave-markets  of  the  nations  whom  she 
conquered.  Carthage,  for  instance,  had  been  drawing 
her  slaves  out  of  inner  Africa  during  many  generations, 
but  after  her  destruction  that  vast  market  was  ceded  to 
Rome.  Greece  and  the  Greek  islands,  which  had  been 
great  centres  of  the  traffic,  became  much  frequented  by 
the  Roman  slave  merchants,  since  Greek  slaves,  owing  to 
their  intellectual  attainments  and  their  personal  beauty, 
were  specially  prized.  Corinth  became  a  famous  mart, 
and  the  island  of  Delos  was  capable  of  an  average  daily 
traffic  in  thousands  of  slaves.  There  was  no  part  of  the 
known  world  in  Asia,  Africa,  and  Europe  from  which 
captives  were  not  despatched  to  Rome.  Every  new  con- 
quest opened  up  a  new  market.  And  when  we  remember 
that,  owing  to  Rome's  frequent  neglect  of  her  fleet,  the 
Mediterranean,  at  least  till  the  days  of  Pompey,  swarmed 
with  pirates,  who  did  a  great  trade  in  kidnapping  and 
sold  their  human  cargoes  at  the  Italian  ports,  we  shall 
not  be  surprised  to  find  that  the  slave-shops  at  Rome  in 
the  Via  Sacra,  the  Via  Suburra,  and  at  the  Temple  of 
Castor  were  always  busy. 

27.  The  fact  that  at  Rome  there  were  no  special 
market-days  for  buying  and  selling  slaves,  but  that  sales 
took  place  daily  at  various  points  throughout  the  city, 
proves  how  great  and  constant  was  her  traffic  in  human 
beings.  That  traffic  was  under  the  immediate  super- 
vision of  the  asdiles,  whose  function  it  was  to  protect 
the  interests  not  merely  of  buyers  but  of  the  State.  A 
fiscal  tariff  on  the  sale  of  slaves  formed  part  of  the 
national  revenue.  There  was  an  ad  valorem  duty  on  the 
import  and  the  export,  and  during  the  reign  of  Augustus 


ROME  271 

a  tax  amounting  to  about  four  per  cent,  of  the  value  was 
levied  on  every  sale.  The  edicts  of  the  aediles  regulated 
the  traffic  and  guaranteed  purchasers  against  fraud.  The 
slave-dealers  (mangones)  were  experts  not  only  in  pre- 
paring slaves  for  the  various  industries,  but  in  improving 
their  physical  appearance.  For  although  slaves  were 
submitted  naked  for  inspection,  unwary  buyers  were  often 
deceived  by  the  tricks  of  the  trade,  and  sometimes  they 
sought  the  advice  of  veterinary  surgeons,  who  pronounced 
upon  the  physical  fitness  of  the  individuals  selected. 
The  commoner  kind  of  slaves  were  exhibited  in  gangs 
on  special  platforms  in  the  market-place,  while  the  finer 
and  more  valuable  sort  were  kept  in  cages  or  wooden 
booths,  where  they  could  be  examined  minutely  and  at 
leisure  by  careful  speculators.  Those  whose  character 
could  not  be  guaranteed  wore  a  cap  {pileus)^  and  prisoners 
of  war  wore  a  crown.  Such  purchases  were  made  at 
the  purchaser's  own  risk.  In  every  other  case  the  law 
required  a  public  declaration  of  the  slave's  character,  and 
often  a  record  of  his  conduct,  written  on  a  scroll,  was 
hung  round  his  neck  so  that  intending  buyers  might 
read  it.  Before  the  moment  of  auction  the  slave  mer- 
chant caused  his  slaves  to  display  their  strength  in  lifting 
heavy  weights,  in  running,  leaping,  and,  when  possible, 
their  accomplishments  in  reading  and  writing.  The  law 
required  that  the  seller  should  declare  the  slave's  nation- 
ality, and  since  there  was  no  known  country  from  which 
slaves  were  not  forwarded  to  Rome,  her  market  provided 
an  object-lesson  in  ethnology.  It  was  usual  to  sell  the 
slave  with  the  clothes  which  he  wore  and  with  a  day's 
rations.  The  entire  trade  involved  on  the  part  of  the 
merchants  not  only  a  deep  knowledge  of  human  nature 
but  great  caution,  on  account  of  the  severity  of  Roman 
law  in  the  case  of  fraudulent  transactions.  Thus  an 
edict  declares  that  the  slave-dealer  is  required  to  inform 


\ 


272  THE   NEMESIS   OF   NATIONS 

purchasers  of  the  vices  or  diseases  of  the  slave,  and  that 
if  there  has  been  concealment  or  intent  to  deceive  the 
law  shall  protect  the  buyer.^  If  the  slave  did  not  answer 
to  his  description  he  was  liable  to  be  returned  within  six 
months  after  the  purchase.  The  word  mangonizare  in- 
dicated the  various  artifices  used  by  the  slave  merchants 
to  make  their  human  wares  more  attractive  and  to  hide 
their  defects.  Since  aged  slaves  were  of  no  value,  and 
were  often  only  thrown  into  the  bargain,  means  were 
employed  to  delay  the  age  of  puberty  or  to  cause  slaves 
to  retain  as  long  as  possible  the  appearance  of  youth. 
Pliny,  for  instance,  tells  us  of  a  certain  woman  who, 
with  the  resin  of  cedarwood,  lead,  and  other  strange 
prescriptions,  professed  to  be  able  to  make  slaves  cut  a 
good  figure  on  market-day.  In  order  to  disguise  the 
leanness  which  was  common  among  them,  terebinth  was 
often  rubbed  on  their  bodies,  because  it  had  the  effect 
of  relaxing  the  skin  and  causing  the  limbs  to  appear 
more  robust."  The  Romans,  indeed,  demanded  from 
slaves  physical,  mental,  and  moral  qualities  which  were 
seldom  found  even  among  freemen.  How  high  the 
standard  was  may  be  measured  by  the  fact  that  some- 
times even  after  a  year  had  elapsed  since  the  purchase 
of  a  slave  an  indemnity  could  be  demanded  by  a  pur- 
chaser who  had  discovered  that  he  had  made  a  bad 
bargain.  Defective  eyesight  or  hearing,  epilepsy,  phthisis, 
varicose  veins,  the  lingering  traces  of  any  disease,  habits 
of  idleness,  fits  of  cowardice  or  of  bad  temper,  a  dull 
intelligence — in   short,   any   physical,   mental,   or    moral 

*  "  Aiunt  aidiles  :  Qui  mancipia  vendunt  certiores  faciant  emptores, 
quid  morbi  vitiive  cuique  sit,  quis  fugitivus  errove  sit  noxave  solutus 
non  sit ;  eademque  omnia,  cum  ea  mancipia  venibunt,  palam  recte 
pronuntianto  "  {Dig.,  xxi.  i,  i).  "  Causa  hujus  edicti  proponendi  est,  ut 
occurratur  fallaciis  vendentium  et  emptoribus  succurratur  quicumque 
decepti  a  venditoribus  fuerint"  (ibid.,  xxi.  i,  2). 

"^  "  Ad  gracilitatem  emendandam"  (N.  H.,  xxiv.  22). 


ROME  273 

defect — gave  the  purchaser  the  right  of  cancelling   the 
agreement.     And    it    is    profoundly    significant    that    in 
Rome,  as  in  Babylon,  purchasers  were  specially  warned 
against    buying    slaves   who    might    be    suffering    from 
nervous  diseases.     Epilepsy  was  a  common  malady,  and 
the  fact  is  a  startling  proof  of  that  destruction  of  the 
nervous  system  which  slavery  involved.     One  or  two  of 
the  facts  mentioned  in  the  edicts  or  in  the  commentaries 
of  imperturbable  jurisconsults,  who  had  an  eye  only  for 
the  legal  aspects  of  those  contracts  of  bondage,  throw 
more    light    on    the   state   of  Roman   slavery   than   any 
volume  of  statistics.     Thus  it  is  declared  to  be  a  fraud 
for  a  slave  merchant  to  sell  slaves  who  had  ever  attempted 
to  commit  suicide.     In  other  words,  suicide  was  regarded 
as  a  luxury  reserved  for  freemen.     The  slave's  life  was 
precious  to  the  master  only  because  of  its  economic  value 
as  an  instrument  of  labour.     But  it  was  to  be  an  instru- 
ment   endowed   with    automatic    obedience.     The    most 
searching  inquiries  were  made  by  slave-buyers  as  to  any 
restive  tendencies  displayed  by  the  new  slave,  and  especi- 
ally as  to  his  record  of  attempts  to  escape.     The  letter 
"F"  branded  on  the  brow  of  a  fugitive  who  had  been 
recaptured  meant  that  he  would  fetch  the  lowest  price 
in  the  market.     Even  if,  while  on  his  master's  errands, 
he  was  given  to  linger  in  the  streets  or  on  the  fields,  to 
look   at   pictures  or  at  games,  he  was  suspected  of  the 
vices  of  the  fugitive,  and  unless  a  declaration  of  those 
latent  symptoms  was  made  by  the  seller  the  contract  of 
sale  could  be  declared  void.     In  every  case  Roman  law 
protected   the   buyer   in  the  most   minute  degree.     For 
instance,  there  was  a  constant  demand  for  robust  slaves, 
but  they  must  not  be  too  robust.     It  was  declared  to  be 
a  fraud  to  offer  for  sale  a   slave  who  had  the  courage 
to  fight  wild  beasts   in   the   arena,  for  he  might   prove 
to  be  too   formidable  a  servant.     Such   a  decree   shows 

s 


274  THE   NEMESIS   OF   NATIONS 

how  unnatural  and  precarious  were  the  relations  between 
master  and  servant  at  Rome.  Finally,  when  we  are  told 
that  according  to  Roman  law  it  was  a  fraud  to  offer  for 
sale  in  the  Roman  slave-market  a  slave  who  was  given  to 
"melancholy,"^  and  that  the  purchaser  was  entitled  to 
damages,  we  are  brought  face  to  face  with  the  paradox 
of  a  system  of  justice  founded  on  so  unjust  a  basis. 

28.  The  private  slaves  were  divided  into  two  great 
classes,  (^i)  fa?nilia  rustica  and  (2)  familia  urhana^  ac- 
cording as  they  worked  in  the  country  or  in  the  town. 
In  the  earlier  period,  when  life  was  simpler,  there  was  no 
distinction  between  urban  and  rural  slaves,  and  when  the 
burgher  came  to  town  he  brought  his  farm  servants  with 
him.  But  when  Rome  grew  larger  and  life  became  more 
luxurious  the  division  and  subdivision  of  servile  labour 
became  more  pronounced.  It  was  not  merely  that  the 
slave  who  served  in  a  great  house  in  the  city  was  better 
educated,  better  fed,  and  better  dressed  than  the  country 
labourer,  but  that  already  during  the  last  two  centuries 
of  the  Republic  special  slaves  performed  in  the  wealthy 
houses  functions  which  had  hitherto  been  fulfilled  by  a 
single  individual.  For  it  is  a  mistake  to  suppose  that 
the  age  of  luxury  began  only  with  the  Empire.  Even 
in  republican  times  agriculture,  with  all  its  accessory 
industries,  was  carried  on  by  a  great  army  of  slaves,  who 
had  been  mainly  recruited  from  the  defeated  armies  of 
the  enemies  of  the  Republic.  Rural  wealth,  indeed, 
consisted  in  slaves  as  well  as  in  cattle  and  land.  The 
position  of  the  slave  who  tilled  the  fields,  dressed  the 
vines,  or  drove  the  oxen  of  Italy  could  hardly  be  more 
clearly  expressed  than  in  the  words  of  Varro.  In  a 
definition  which  is  worthy  of  Aristotle  he  tells  us  that 
agricultural  implements  are  divided  into  three  classes — 

^  Paulus,  Dig.^  xxi.  i,  2.     "Melancholia"  sometimes  meant  insanity 
as  well  as  bad  temper. 


ROME 


275 


(i)  those  which  are  articulate,  that  is  to  say,  slaves; 
(2)  those  which  are  semi-articulate,  such  as  oxen  ;  and  (3) 
those  which  are  inarticulate,  such  as  the  waggon.^  With 
that  naivete  which  startles  a  modern  reader,  Varro 
recommends  that  hired  labourers,  instead  of  one's  own 
slaves,  should  be  employed  in  the  unhealthy  districts  ; 
not,  as  some  writers  suppose,  because  of  a  humane 
interest  in  the  slave's  welfare,  but  for  the  shrewd  reason 
that  in  case  of  death  the  loss  would  fall  upon  the  owner 
of  the  hireling.  And  although  he  points  out  that  liberal 
treatment  is  advisable,  the  motive  is  again  economic,  since 
thereby  the  slaves  will  be  capable  of  still  more  labour.^ 
Doubtless  impoverished  freemen  sometimes  hired  them- 
selves for  farmwork,  but  they  were  an  insignificant 
minority.  When  Cato  says  that  a  vineyard  of  100 
jugera  demanded  about  sixteen  labourers  {operarios)^  he 
means  them  all  to  be  slaves.  We  are  expressly  told  by 
another  Roman  writer  on  agriculture  that  the  Italian 
vineyards  were  cultivated  by  slaves,  and  that  it  was 
found  convenient  to  subdivide  them  into  gangs  of  ten. 
Such  slaves  required  to  be  specially  intelligent  and  robust ; 
but  since  these  qualities  would  render  them  dangerous, 
and  since  vineyards  were  of  great  value,  the  vine-dressers 
were  made  to  work  in  chains.^  It  is  therefore  no  mere 
modern  sentimentalism  which  lets  us  hear  the  actual 
clanking  of  chains  amid  the  harvests  and  in  the  vineyards 
of  ancient  Italy,  for  in  the  pages  of  her  most  prosaic 
writers  we  read  of  peasants  working  shackled  in  the 
fields.^     When  we  remember  not  only  that  the  manual 

1  "  Alii  {i.e.  scriptores)  dividunt  in  tres  partes,  instrumenti  genus  vocale 
et  semivocale  et  mutum,  vocale,  in  quo  sunt  servi,  semivocale,  in  quo 
sunt  boves,  mutum  in  quo  sunt  plaustra"  {De  Re.  Rust.,  i.  17,  2). 

^  "  Studiosiores  ad  opus  fieri"  (ibid.,  i.  17,  7). 

3  De  Re.  Rust.,  xi. 

*  Columella,  De  Re.  Rust.,  ix.  "  Ideoque  vineta  plurimum  per  alligatos 
excoluntur." 

*  Cf.  Cato,  op.  cit.,  Ivi, 


276  THE   NEMESIS  OF   NATIONS 

labour  on  the  farm,  the  villa,  and  on  the  estates  of  the 
Roman  grandee  was  performed  by  multitudes  of  chained 
men,  but  that  the  implements  which  they  used  had  been 
manufactured  and  sometimes  invented  by  their  fellow- 
slaves  who  were  kept  at  work  in  the  shops  and  factories 
of  the  city,  we  see  how  wide  was  the  ramification  of  the 
servile  system.  The  vine-dresser  (visitor),  the  landscape 
gardener  {topiarius),  the  shepherd  {pastor)^  the  digger 
(^fossor),  the  reaper  (messor),  the  ploughman  (arator),  the 
ox-driver  (^bubulcus)^  the  goat-herd  (caprarius),  the  swine- 
herd (porcarius),  the  rough-riders  {mansuetarii),  the  poultry 
keeper  {gallinarius)^  the  hunter  (venator),  the  dairyman 
(lactarius),  and  a  hundred  other  indispensable  farm 
labourers,  were  all  slaves.  The  day  came  when  the 
country  gentleman  employed  a  slave  as  wolf-killer 
{/uparius),  to  drive  the  wolves  from  his  estate  when  his 
own  bow  should  have  done  the  work.  But  the  tools 
which  were  in  the  hands  of  all  labourers — the  ploughs, 
the  spades,  the  hoes,  the  pruning-hooks  for  the  vine, 
the  shears,  the  waggons  for  harvest,  the  harness  for 
horses  and  oxen,  the  bridles,  even  the  whips  which  were 
used  for  oxen,  horses,  and  men  alike — were  also  the 
handiwork  of  slaves.  A  slave  captain  or  overseer  (villicus\ 
who  was  himself  a  slave,  was  immediately  responsible  to 
the  proprietor,  and  for  purposes  of  discipline  every 
estate  possessed  a  prison  or  ergastulum  in  which  dis- 
obedient slaves  were  punished. 

29.  In  the  city,  however,  there  existed  a  far  more 
elaborate  organisation  of  servile  labour.  To  make  a  list 
of  the  functions  of  the  public  and  the  private  slaves  of 
Rome  would  be  to  mention  every  industry  and  every 
luxury  known  to  the  ancient  world.  Artisans  of  every 
kind,  household  and  personal  servants,  the  attendants 
of  the  public  baths,  gardens,  temples,  and  statues  of  the 
gods,  and  even  the  night  watchmen,  were  slaves.    Cooks 


ROME  277 

and  bakers,  barbers  and  footboys,  shoemakers,  carpenters, 
and  smiths,  jewellers  and  musicians,  singers  and  dancers, 
all  belonged  with  coachmen,  boatmen,  and  gladiators  to 
the  class  whom  the  Romans  described  as  being  possessed 
of  no  human  rights.  Although  according  to  Roman 
law  there  was  no  real  difference  in  the  servile  condition,^ 
nevertheless  some  slaves  were  more  fortunate  than  others, 
and  there  were  grades  of  bondage.  It  was  not  only  that 
those  who  were  identified  with  the  more  luxurious 
habits  of  their  masters  were  often  in  easy  and  even 
enviable  circumstances,  and  enjoyed  a  prospect  of  early 
liberation  denied  to  the  dull  mechanic  who  was  chained 
in  field  or  factory  and  laboured  in  his  chains  until 
death.  In  Rome,  as  in  Babylon,  slaves  {ordinarii)  were 
the  owners  of  other  slaves  {vicarii).  A  slave,  for  in- 
stance, who  practised  economy  in  his  daily  rations  was 
often  able  to  buy  another  slave  whom  he  compelled 
to  share  his  labour,  and  often  to  perform  the  whole 
of  it.  For  this  reason  it  became  later  a  great  problem 
for  the  Roman  jurists  to  decide  whether  the  slave- 
master  of  a  slave-master  should  not  make  the  latter 
responsible  for  the  acts  of  a  slave  of  the  second  rank. 
The  entire  system  thus  involved  an  elaborate  parasitism, 
and  we  may  be  sure  that  the  greatest  sufl^erings  fell  to 
the  lot  of  those  mediastini^  mere  creatures  of  muscle, 
who  were  too  unintelligent  and  gross  ever  to  be  able 
to  rise  from  the  lowest  steps  of  the  long  ladder  of 
slavery.  That  minute  subdivision  of  labour  which  was 
already  in  existence  during  the  last  two  hundred  years 
of  the  Republic  became  still  more  minute  during  the 
Empire,  when  Rome  was  hungering  after  the  despotism 
and  luxury  of  the  East.  The  change  in  the  habits  of 
the  people  is  well  illustrated  by  the  fact  that  whereas 
in  the  earlier  period  the  visitor  to  a  house  gained  admit- 
^  "  In  sen-orum  conditione  nulla  est  differentia"  {Inst.  Just.,  I.  iii.  5). 


278  THE   NEMESIS   OF   NATIONS 

tance  by  knocking  the  hammer  which  hung  at  the 
door,  in  the  later  period  he  was  admitted  by  a  slave 
doorkeeper,  who  was  perhaps  chained  to  the  door- 
post. If  the  house  were  a  great  one  a  numerous  retinue 
would  be  found  within  it,  for  the  social  position  of  a 
citizen  began  to  be  measured  according  to  the  number 
of  slaves  whom  he  could  afford  to  maintain  in  his 
town  house  and  his  country  villa.  In  the  case  of  the 
wealthiest  men  the  two  famili^  were  kept  distinct,  and 
the  style  of  elegant  living  which  at  length  came  into 
vogue  in  the  city  demanded  well-trained  and  expensive 
slaves.  Ostentation  devised  new  functions  for  a  hier- 
archy of  superfluous  attendants.  The  kitchen,  the 
banqueting-room,  and  the  bath  had  each  a  full  staff, 
and  special  slaves  were  even  appointed  to  guard  and 
preserve  those  images  of  ancestors  which  were  the  mark 
of  the  family's  greatness.  We  hear  of  handsomely 
dressed  pages  {delicdt'i)  and  serving-men,^  whose  names 
form  a  weary  list — carvers,  cupbearers,  anointers,  bath- 
heaters,  wardrobe  keepers  and  toilet  slaves,  sandal  and 
umbrella  carriers,  musicians,  and  even  manicurists.^  It 
is  part  of  the  irony  of  the  system  that  the  physicians, 
surgeons,  and  oculists  were  likewise  slaves.^  The  educa- 
tion of  Roman  children  was  not  conducted  by  freemen, 
for  their  nurses  and  tutors,  both  male  and  female, 
belonged  to  the  servile  class.  Even  adults  became 
learned  by  proxy,  and  bought  literary  slaves,  reciters 
of  poems,  librarians,  secretaries,  and  musicians,  who  gave 
a  refined  tone  to  a  house.  When  a  rich  Roman 
appeared  in  public  he  was  preceded  by  numerous  slaves 
[anteamhulones)  who  prepared  the  way  for  him,  and  he 
was  followed  by  another  troupe  {pedisequi)^  dressed  in  his 

^  Marquardt,  Das  Privat  Lcbe?i,  i.  pp.  145  sqg.  ^  Popma,  57. 

3  Pignorius,  70,  71.      They  often  received  great  emoluments,  how- 
ever, and  were  generally  liberated. 


ROME  279 

livery  and  ready  to  run  his  errands.  His  litter  was 
carried  by  special  bearers  {lecticarii),  whom  fashion  gener- 
ally chose  from  Syria  or  Asia  Minor.  And  at  night 
his  torch-bearers  {lampadophori)  made  light  for  him 
through  the  lampless  streets.  Oriental  methods  were 
so  closely  mimicked  that  many  a  Roman  grandee,  like 
an  Assyrian  king,  had  his  fly-flapper,  fan-bearer,  and 
food-taster.  The  bread  he  ate  was  baked  by  slaves  with 
wheat  which  slaves  had  sown  and  reaped ;  the  wine  he 
drank  came  from  vineyards  in  which  slaves  were  the 
vine-dressers;  the  water  for  his  bath  was  led  through 
vast  aqueducts  which  had  been  built  by  slave  labour. 
Everything  he  handled  had  been  manufactured  by  those 
"  articulate  implements,"  shipped  to  Rome  in  such  abun- 
dance and  replaced  so  easily  as  soon  as  they  were  worn 
out.  His  clothes  and  embroidered  coverlets  and  his  linen 
were  woven  and  spun  by  unpaid  spinners  and  weavers, 
and  his  furniture  and  porcelain  were  the  handiwork  of 
men  whose  only  recompense  was  food  ;  he  listened  to 
music  and  songs  played  and  sung  by  slaves,  and  slaves 
even  copied  the  books  which  he  read.  It  is  little  wonder 
if  the  master  of  so  many  servants  became  incapable  of 
doing  anything  for  himself,  if  Roman  character  was  at 
last  mummified,  and  if  so  unnatural  a  divorce  between 
capital  and  labour  ended  in  the  economic  sterility  of 
the  State.  The  creative  energies,  the  powers  of  inven- 
tion and  imagination,  belonged  only  to  the  outcasts  from 
law  who,  in  a  definition  which  was  no  doubt  considered 
brilliant  and  epigrammatic  in  its  day,  were  described  as 
"  almost  a  second  race  of  men."  ^ 

30.  There  is  nothing  more  remarkable  in  the  history 
of  ancient  States  than  the  fact  that,  in  spite  of  this  vast 
disproportion  between  those  who  had   rights  and  those 

1  "  Quasi  secundum  hominum  genus  "  {Florus,  iii.  20).     The  phrase 
was  not  meant  to  be  contemptuous. 


28o  THE   NEMESIS   OF   NATIONS 

who  had  none,  the  ruling  class  were  so  long  successful  in 
their  method  of  control.  In  the  Rome  of  Caesar's  age 
four  hundred  and  fifty  thousand  citizens  were  the  lords  of 
an  empire  at  least  seven  times  larger  than  modern  France, 
and  they  governed  it  by  means  of  a  tyranny  whose  exces- 
sive weight  reached  far  down,  and  was  felt  most  heavily 
in  the  lowest  social  strata.  Even  although  we  were  to 
accept  the  estimate  ot  Gibbon,  according  to  whom  ^  the 
number  of  slaves  of  any  period  of  Roman  history  probably 
balanced  the  number  of  freemen,  it  would  still  be  remark- 
able that  an  equilibrium  was  so  long  maintained  between 
social  forces  of  such  magnitude  and  so  unnaturally  ad- 
justed. It  is  true  that  Rome  did  not  escape  the  dangers 
of  insurrections  by  her  slaves,  and  a  servile  revolt  in- 
variably filled  the  city  with  excitement.  But,  on  the 
whole,  the  insurrections  were  few,  and  the  reason  was 
that  combination  was  rarely  possible  among  a  mass  of 
human  beings  gathered  from  the  ends  of  the  world, 
speaking  different  languages,  worshipping  different  gods, 
and  no  doubt  often  regarding  each  other  with  intense 
racial  hate.  As  Rome  grew  greater  their  numbers 
increased.  Recent  investigators  believe  that  the  ancient 
accounts  of  those  numbers  were,  on  the  whole,  not 
exaggerated."  Exact  calculations  are  of  course  impossible, 
but  that  the  slave  traffic  was  enormous  is  proved  by  the 
profoundly  significant  fact  that  in  Rome  capital  at  last 
found  one  of  its  best  investments  in  slaves.  An  even 
more  remarkable  proof  of  the  growth  of  slavery  is  that 
in  the  reign  of  Augustus  a  law  was  passed  which  forbade 
any  citizen  to  liberate  by  his  testament  more  than  a 
hundred  of  his  servants.^  In  other  words,  it  cannot  have 
been  uncommon  for  a  Roman   citizen   to  possess  many 

*  Ch.  ii.  *  Marquardt,  Das  Privat  Leben,  i.  i66. 

'  Gaius,  Inst.,  i.  43.    "  Sed  praescribit  lex,  ne  cui  plures  manumittere 
liceat  quam  C." 


ROME  281 

hundreds  of  slaves.  We  hear,  for  instance,  that  Scaurus 
numbered  in  his  wealth  more  than  four  thousand,  that 
Crassus  possessed  great  gangs  of  them,  that  in  the  reign 
of  Augustus  a  certain  Ca^cilius  Claudius  Isidorus  left  four 
thousand  one  hundred  and  sixteen,^  and  that  in  the  reign 
of  Nero  in  the  house  of  the  prasfect  of  the  city  as  many 
as  four  hundred  were  massacred  at  a  stroke.^  In  the 
columbaria  or  tombs  in  the  Via  Appia  and  elsewhere 
belonging  to  the  royal  family  the  urns  of  thousands  of 
slaves  have  been  discovered.  According  to  Plutarch, 
Cassar  once  gave  a  gladiatorial  show  in  which  as  many  as 
six  hundred  and  forty  gladiators,  who  were  all  slaves, 
appeared,  and  the  Emperor  Trajan,  during  a  carnival 
which  lasted  four  months,  sent  ten  thousand  into  the 
arena.  Such  facts  indicate  an  inexhaustible  market. 
When,  too,  we  remember  not  only  that  slaves  were  being 
continually  imported,  but  that,  although  legal  marriage 
was  forbidden  to  them,  breeding  was  extensively  en- 
couraged, it  will  be  no  surprise  to  hear  that  in  Italy 
freemen  were  outnumbered.  If  a  man  possessed  no 
slaves  it  was  a  sign  of  his  poverty,  and  the  word  familia 
was  not  given  to  a  number  less  than  fifteen.  No  doubt 
there  were  constant  fluctuations  in  the  supply  and  the 
demand,  but  it  is  admitted  even  by  those  who  are  most 
sceptical  regarding  ancient  figures  that,  for  instance,  in  the 
year  529  of  the  city  the  proportion  of  freemen  to  slaves 
was  27  :  22.^  According  to  more  recent  calculations, 
when  the  free  adult  male  population  of  Rome  numbered 
320,000  her  slaves  numbered  900,000,*  Gibbon  was 
inclined  to  believe  that  during  the  reign  of  Claudius 
Rome  possessed  throughout  the  whole  of  her  empire, 
from   the   banks   of   the  Euphrates  in   the   east   to   the 

1  Pliny,  "Nat.  Hist.,"  xxxiii.  lo.  »  Tacitus,  Ann.,  xiv.  43, 

^  Dureau  de  la  Malle,  i.  289. 
*  M.?iXQ^?ixdL\.,  Staaisverwaltung^Vi.  124. 


2  82  THE   NEMESIS   OF   NATIONS 

waves  of  the  Atlantic  in  the  west,  about  60,000,000 
slaves.^  So  far,  however,  as  Italy  herself  is  concerned,  it 
seems  safe  to  suppose  that  at  the  beginning  of  the  Empire 
her  slaves  numbered  not  less  than  1,500,000.^  It  is  true 
that  during  the  Empire  the  free  population  was  artificially 
increased  by  the  grant  of  citizenship  to  foreigners  and  by 
the  liberation  of  slaves.  But  for  every  slave  who  was 
liberated  hundreds  of  new  captives  were  introduced.  It 
has  been  computed  that  in  the  reign  of  Augustus,  Italy, 
from  the  valley  of  the  Po  southwards,  contained  about 
five  and  a  half  million  inhabitants.  The  calculation 
appears  to  be  too  low ;  but  no  matter  what  was  the 
figure  which  the  census  of  Roman  freemen  reached,  it 
was  at  least  in  the  later  period  always  more  than  balanced 
by  the  number  of  slaves. 

31.  The  market  prices  of  slaves  were  liable  to  the 
fluctuations  which  affected  all  other  commodities.  But 
it  has  been  supposed  that  500  drachmae,  or  a  little  over 
/16,  was  an  average  price  for  an  average  slave  during 
the  Republic  and  the  Empire.  Owing  to  the  differences 
between  ancient  and  modern  economic  conditions,  how- 
ever, it  is  difficult  to  estimate  the  real  cost  of  servile 
labour.  Some  writers  suppose  that  from  -the  second 
Punic  war  till  the  reign  of  Trajan  the  average  price 
of  agricultural  slaves  was  as  high  as  ;^8o.^  And  accord- 
ing to  Columella,  who  was  writing  in  the  age  of  Claudius, 
8000  sestertii,  which  is  about  the  same  amount,  were  paid 
for  a  vine-dresser.  Those  who  traded  in  slaves  doubtless 
made  large  fortunes,  but  it  is  probable  that  servile  labour 
often  caused  a  loss  to  the  employer.  If  it  cost  about 
;^24  yearly  to  maintain  a  slave,^  when  work  was  scarce 

1  Ch.  ii.      According  to  Beloch,  however,  the  entire  population  of 
the  Roman  world  did  not  exceed  60,000,000  at  the  death  of  Augustus. 
*  Beloch,  Die  Bevolkerung  der  Griechisch-J\omischen  IVelt,  p.  436. 
»  Dureau  de  la  Malic,  i.  154.  *  Ibid.,  p.  150. 


ROME  283 

the  owner  who  hired  out  his  workmen  had  a  poor  return 
for  his  investment.  Moreover,  he  was  placed  in  the  fol- 
lowing dilemma.  If  he  starved  his  slaves  he  would  render 
them  unfit  for  work  and  therefore  for  hire ;  if,  on  the 
other  hand,  he  treated  them  liberally  while  there  was 
little  demand  for  their  labour  he  would  be  ruined,  or  he 
might  be  compelled  to  sell  them  at  a  loss.  During  the 
Empire  a  mason  could  be  hired  for  sixpence  per  day,  a  baker 
for  about  one  shilling,  a  marble-cutter  for  one  shilling 
and  fourpence,  and  a  carpenter  for  the  same  price  as  a 
baker.  Thus  when  the  supply  of  such  workmen  was 
greater  than  the  demand  for  them,  and  when  food  was 
dear,  the  system  was  ruinous  both  to  the  slave  and  the 
slave-owner.  It  has  been  plausibly  urged  that  in  dull 
times  the  maintenance  of  a  slave  cost  his  master  more 
than  the  maintenance  of  a  modern  servant.  On  the 
other  hand,  in  the  case  of  a  scarcity  in  any  special 
kind  of  labour  the  rate  of  hire  could  be  raised  and  a 
large  profit  secured.  Gladiators  were  sometimes  hired 
for  about  twelve  shillings  per  show,  with  a  special 
indemnity  in  the  case  of  their  death.  Pliny,  in  a  pic- 
turesque comparison,  informs  us  that  at  one  time  shield- 
bearers  were  sold  cheaper  than  nightingales,  and  he  knew 
of  a  case  in  which  a  white  nightingale  sold  for  6000 
sestertii,  or  about  £60.  The  slaves  of  luxury  were,  of 
course,  the  most  expensive,  and  we  hear  of  enormous 
prices  given  by  connoisseurs.  Whereas,  according  to 
the  slave  tariff  fixed  by  the  Code  of  Justinian,  a  child 
below  ten  years  was  to  be  sold  for  about  £6,  a  child 
over  ten  years  for  about  double  that  amount,  and  a 
man  of  average  accomplishments  for  about  £30,^  there 
are  instances  in  which  sums  over  ;^iooo  were  paid  for 
handsome  youths.  Mark  Antony,  if  Pliny  is  to  be 
trusted,  paid  almost  ,£2000  for  two  boys,  and  eunuchs 

^  Wallon,  ii.  173. 


284  THE   NEMESIS   OF   NATIONS 

sometimes  brought  fabulous  prices.  Skilled  doctors  also 
were  sold  at  a  high  price  in  the  slave-market,  and  those 
who  had  spent  money  on  the  education  of  all  the  finer 
sort  of  literary  and  artistic  slaves  made  large  profits  on 
their  investments.  Actors  and  actresses,  readers  and 
grammarians,  and  men  skilled  in  special  arts  such  as 
painting,  music,  and  dancing,  were  far  beyond  the  reach 
of  the  ordinary  buyer.  The  owner  of  such  slaves  treated 
them  with  the  same  care  which  he  bestowed  upon  his 
racing  stud.  These  more  expensive  slaves  were  brought 
into  personal  relations  with  their  master,  often  succeeded 
in  wringing  great  concessions  from  him,  shared  his  luxury, 
and  at  last  gained  their  freedom.  But  that  the  system 
in  its  economic  aspect  was  full  of  risk  to  the  speculators, 
and  full  of  moral  and  physical  ruin  to  the  meaner  sort  of 
those  on  whose  bodies  the  speculation  was  made,  is  proved 
by  the  fact  that  the  average  duration  of  the  life  of  the 
average  labouring  slave  is  supposed  to  have  been  only 
about  eight  years. ^ 

32.  During  a  long  period  the  authority  of  the  Roman 
citizen  within  the  walls  of  his  own  house  was  so  absolute 
that  the  Roman  State  was  really  a  collection  of  miniature 
monarchies.  The  Empire,  indeed,  was  the  last  stage  of 
the  evolution  of  a  social  system  which  had  been  latent 
from  the  beginning.  For  the  emperor  was  only  the 
magnified  form  of  the  citizen,  who  was  no  less  omni- 
potent within  the  restricted  area  of  his  own  domain. 
Sometimes  that  area  was  by  no  means  restricted  in  the 
case  of  the  great  landowners,  who  were  also  the  owners 
of  many  hundreds  of  slaves.  Within  their  territory  no 
one  questioned  their  rule.  During  many  centuries  there 
existed   no  relation  between  the  public  and  the  private 

'  Bureau  de  la  Malle,  i.  150.  The  average  duration  of  the  life  of  the 
miners  in  Laurion  is  supposed  by  some  writers  to  have  been  only  two 
years. 


ROME  285 

law  of  Rome,  and  all  that  took  place  behind  the  screen  of 
domestic  privacy  was  outside  the  jurisdiction  of  the  courts. 
Within  every  house  the  house-father  held  his  own  assize, 
and  beyond  it  there  was  no  appeal.  His  power  over  his  off- 
spring was  as  great  as  his  power  over  his  slaves.  He  and 
only  he  was  the  rewarder  of  their  deeds,  the  judge  of  their 
misdeeds  and  of  the  measure  of  punishment.  If  during 
the  Empire  this  domestic  tribunal  began  to  lose  much  of 
its  authority,  the  interference  of  the  State  was  not  at  first 
due  to  any  humane  motives.  Just  as  during  the  Middle 
Ages  it  was  the  shrewd  policy  of  the  sovereign  to  assist 
the  villein  against  the  feudal  lord,  so,  it  was  in  the  in- 
terest of  the  Roman  emperors  to  diminish  the  independent 
judicial  powers  of  the  haughty  Roman  citizen  in  order  to 
reduce  the  entire  people  to  a  common  level.  The  causes 
which  brought  about  an  amelioration  of  the  condition  of 
the  servile  classes  were  complex,  and  are  difficult  to  dis- 
entangle. They  were  economic  as  well  as  political  and 
religious.  The  work  of  reform  was  the  result  of  a 
strange  and  unconscious  alliance  between  the  subtle 
diplomacy  of  the  throne  and  the  great  new  doctrine  of 
Christ.  The  fact  remains,  however,  that  it  was  during 
the  Empire  that  the  burden  of  slavery  was  somewhat 
lightened,  and  it  is  sufficient  to  save  us  from  the  folly 
of  supposing  that,  in  a  world  in  which  all  government 
so  easily  becomes  misgovernment,  men  are  necessarily 
free  and  happy  under  a  republic.  It  was  precisely 
during  the  victorious  years  of  the  Roman  republic  that 
the  tyranny  of  the  slave-owner  became  most  formid- 
able. It  was  not  until  the  first  century  of  the  Empire, 
and  probably  in  the  reign  of  Nero,  that  a  law  was  passed, 
Lex  Petronia,  which  prohibited  a  master  arbitrarily  to 
hand  over  a  slave  to  fight  with  the  wild  beasts  {ad 
hestias  depugnandas).  Such  early  effiDrts  in  the  cause  of 
humanity  were  no  doubt  timid.      For  instance,  in  the 


2  86  THE   NEMESIS   OF  NATIONS 

case  in  question,  if  the  slave  was  found  guilty  by  a 
judge  the  law  acquiesced  in  the  fearful  punishment 
which  the  master  had  proposed,  and  the  slave  was  duly 
thrown  into  the  arena.  Later  came  the  far  bolder  and 
nobler  legislation  of  men  like  Hadrian,  Antoninus  Pius,^ 
and  Justinian,  and  in  some  of  their  decrees  we  discover 
traces  of  the  undoubted  influence  of  the  Gospel.  The 
long  delay  of  mercy  and  reform  is  to  be  explained  by  the 
Roman  reverence  for  property  which  is  the  fetich  of  all 
law.  According  to  the  law  of  Rome  the  slave  was  not  a 
person  but  a  chattel.  After  his  price  had  been  paid  his 
master  possessed  over  him  the  right  of  use  or  of  abuse, 
and  until  very  late  in  the  history  of  Rome  the  leg  of  a 
slave  could  be  broken  by  his  owner  with  as  much  im- 
punity as  the  leg  of  a  chair.  No  doubt  it  would  be 
dangerous  to  generalise  too  much  on  the  treatment  of 
Roman  slaves.  That  treatment  varied  from  epoch  to 
epoch,  and  in  accordance  with  the  temperaments  and 
the  tempers  of  the  masters.  In  a  history  so  dark  with 
crime  it  is  pleasant,  for  instance,  to  discover  traces  of  a 
magnanimous  spirit  in  a  writer  like  Columella,  or  in  the 
letters  of  the  younger  Pliny,  who  betrays  a  genuine 
sympathy  with  his  own  bondsmen.  If,  however,  the 
mortality  of  slaves  was  great  even  when  their  master 
was  a  kind  man  like  Pliny,  who  complains  of  losses,^ 
we  can  imagine  the  huge  waste  of  life  which  the  whole 
system  in  its  most  violent  aspects  involved.  That 
system,  therefore,  must  be  judged  not  by  isolated  in- 
stances of  benignity  or  of  malignity  but  by  its  broad 
results.  During  a  banquet  at  which  the  Emperor 
Augustus  was  a  guest  a  serving-man  broke  a  crystal 
vase,    and    by    way    of   punishment    the    host,    Vedius 

^  Gaius,  I.  V.  3. 

2  "  Confecerunt   me   infirmitates  meorum,  mortes  etiam,  et  quidem 
iuvenum"  (Ep.  viii.  16). 


ROME  287 

Pollio,  ordered  the  youth  to  be  thrown  into  the  great 
fish-pond  to  be  devoured  by  monster  eels.  The  youth 
fled  to  the  feet  of  the  emperor,  and  begged  not  for  life 
but  for  another  form  of  death.  Augustus  intervened, 
saved  the  slave's  life,  and  ordered  all  the  crystal  in  the 
house  to  be  broken  and  the  fish-pond  to  be  filled  up. 
Nevertheless,  that  same  Augustus  once  nailed  to  the 
mast  of  a  ship  one  of  his  own  servants  against  whom 
he  had  a  grudge.  There  is,  indeed,  abundant  evidence 
to  prove  that  slaves  were  frequently  exposed  to  similar 
sudden  outbursts  of  fury.  A  single  sentence  of  Seneca 
indicates  how  precarious  was  their  position,  for  he  tells 
us  that  it  was  permissible  to  do  anything  to  a  slave.^  In 
another  passage  he  turns  with  disgust  from  *'  the  vast 
subject,"  as  he  calls  it.  But,  like  Aristotle,  he  appears 
to  have  been  fascinated  by  it,  returns  to  it  again  and 
again,  and  in  more  than  one  epigram  succeeds  in  blast- 
ing Roman  character.  He  presents,  for  example,  a  vivid 
picture  of  a  Roman  grandee  sumptuously  dining  before 
the  night's  revels  properly,  or  rather  improperly,  begin. 
In  the  enjoyment  of  a  degraded  luxury  the  viveur  is 
surrounded  by  a  crowd  of  liveried  slaves,  any  one  of 
whom  if  he  moves  his  lips  (movere  lahra),  or  sighs,  or 
even  coughs,  is  instantly  punished.  Woe  to  the  servant 
who,  in  the  midst  of  a  scene  of  gluttony,^  is  slow  to 
understand  his  part  in  a  ridiculous  and  laborious  etiquette, 
or  refuses  to  fulfil  the  office  appointed  for  him  in  the 
programme  of  the  night's  debauch.^  A  long  list  of  the 
instruments  of  punishment  and  torture  indicates  how 
formidable  domestic  service  had  become  in  the  age  of 
Roman  splendour.     Shackles  for  the  hands  and  the  feet, 

^  "  Cum  in  servum  omnia  liceant"  {De  Clem.,  i.  18,  2). 
^  Ep.  xlvii. 

^  "  Tota  nocte  pervigilat,  quam  inter  ebrietatem  domini  ac  libidinem 
dividit,  et  in  cubiculo  vir  et  in  convivio  puer  est"  (Ep.  xlvii.). 


2  88  THE   NEMESIS   OF   NATIONS 

scourges  made  of  chains,  knotted  rods,  whips  and  thongs 
loaded  with  lead  and  bronze  or  with  pieces  of  sharp  bone, 
a  heavy  iron  collar  to  which  the  hands  were  fastened,  and 
many  other  tools  were  used  in  a  penal  system  which  in 
many  cases  involved  nothing  less  than  the  vivisection 
of  its  victims.^  Their  injuries  became  a  matter  of 
scientific  interest  to  ancient  physicians  like  Galen,  who 
said  that  sometimes  the  eyes  of  slaves  were  put  out, 
that  the  tongues  of  those  who  were  talkative  were  re- 
moved, and  that  the  legs  of  recaptured  fugitives  were 
broken.^  Slaves  suffered  not  only  vivisection  but  vivi- 
cremation,  for  it  was  upon  their  bodies  that,  in  the  opinion 
of  old  writers,  experiments  in  burning  living  men  were 
first  made.  The  usual  mode,  however,  of  carrying  out 
their  death  sentence  was  crucifixion. 

33.  Perhaps  the  indifference  with  which  their  lives 
were  regarded  could  not  be  better  illustrated  than  by  a 
passage  of  Cicero,  who  informs  us  that  it  had  become  a 
problem  in  ethics  whether  during  a  threatened  shipwreck 
valuable  horses  or  slaves  should  be  sacrificed.  For  the 
vast  majority  of  the  Roman  citizens  of  Cicero's  age  that 
problem  had  only  a  financial  aspect,  and  he  too  admits 
that  whereas  feelings  of  humanity  pointed  to  one  solu- 
tion of  the  problem,  motives  of  economy  suggested  the 
other.^  And  this  remark  is  valuable,  because  we  thus 
learn  that  slaves  in  Rome,  as  in  Babylon,  were  usually 
cheaper  than  horses.  It  had  also  become  a  question  for 
the  debating  societies  of  the  day  whether  during  a  scar- 
city of  supplies  a  man's  servants  should  be  allowed  to 
perish.  The  habit  of  looking  upon  them  as  creatures 
less  than  human   is   again  strikingly  shown   in   another 

1  Pignorius,  p.   18  sqq.;   Blair,  pp.  63,  in,   229;    Marquardt,  Das 
Privat  Leben,  pp.  182  sqq. 
*  Pignorius,  p.  18. 
^  "Hie  alio  res  familiaris,  alio  ducit  humanitas  "  {De  Officiis,  iii.  23). 


ROME  289 

passage  in  which  Cicero,  when  writing  to  a  friend, 
excuses  himself  and  feels  ashamed  for  having  regretted 
the  death  of  one  of  his  own  slaves/  That  their  death 
was  not  only  not  deplored,  but  compassed  and  hastened 
and  made  more  frightful  by  the  slave-owners  of  his  own 
time,  is  proved  by  the  speech  in  which  Cicero  informs 
the  judges  that  a  slave,  who  indeed  had  been  condemned 
as  a  criminal,  was  not  crucified  before  his  tongue  had 
been  cut  out  in  order  that  on  the  cross  he  might  not 
divulge  the  crimes  of  his  mistress."  In  Rome  there  was 
no  genuine  asylum  for  the  wretch  who  fled  from  such  a 
fate.  By  a  decree  of  the  Senate,  the  sanctuary  afforded 
by  the  temples  and  the  statues  of  the  gods  was  abolished, 
owing  to  the  fact  that  criminals  had  taken  advantage  of 
the  privilege.  And  although,  later,  fugitive  slaves  clung 
to  the  statues  of  the  emperors,  they  found  in  these  only  a 
precarious  refuge.  The  master  waited  until  his  fugitive 
was  starved  into  submission,  and  then  ensued  either 
torture,  administered  by  torturers  hired  for  the  purpose, 
or  else  death  in  the  arena.  The  peculiar  villainy  of  the 
corrupt  public  spirit  of  imperial  Rome  is  seen  in  the 
fact  that  such  deaths  of  captured  fugitives  formed  special 
attractions  as  theatrical  interludes  and  episodes  during 
the  shows  of  the  wild  beasts.  Successful  flight  was, 
indeed,  rarely  possible.  In  the  sacred  name  of  property, 
Roman  law  did  all  in  its  power  to  assist  the  master  in 
laying  hands  on  the  runaway,  and  any  one  who  har- 
boured him  was  guilty  of  crime.  The  State  prisons 
were  ready  to  receive  the  slave  until  such  time  as  was 
convenient  to  hand  him  back  for  retribution  in  the 
domestic   assize.      Handbills    with    full    descriptions   of 

^  Ad  Ati.,  i.  12.  There  is  evidence  that  Cicero  treated  his  own  slaves 
— for  instance,  Tiro — with  kindness  and  even  afifection  (Wallon,  iii.  16). 

*  "Nam  Stratonem  quidem,  judices,  in  crucem  actum  esse  exsecta 
scitote  lingua  "  {Pro  Cluentw,  67). 

T 


290  THE   NEMESIS   OF   NATIONS 

his  age,  appearance,  and  height  were  placarded  in  the 
public  places,  and,  as  in  Greece,  professional  slave- 
catchers  were  soon  on  his  track.  Moreover,  slaves  who 
were  suspected  of  the  intention  of  escaping  were  com- 
pelled to  wear  irremovable  metal  collars,  upon  which  the 
names  and  addresses  of  their  masters  were  engraved. 
Many  of  those  collars,  made  of  lead  or  brass,  have  been 
discovered,  and  the  following  may  be  taken  as  a  typical 
inscription  :  "  Catch  me,  because  I  am  trying  to  escape, 
and  take  me  back  to  my  master,  Bonifacio,  the  linen 
weaver."  ^  This  label  is  specially  interesting,  because  at 
the  end  it  contains  the  name  and  symbol  of  Christ, 
"  Alpha,  Christus,  Omega."  Since  these  words  appear 
immediately  after  the  name  of  the  slave-owner,  it  is 
certain  that  he,  and  not  the  slave,  was  a  Christian. 
The  surveillance  of  fugitives  must  have  been  vigilant, 
because  there  is  a  case  in  which  a  slave  who  had  fled  to 
Africa — the  great  mother  of  slaves — was  pursued  and 
brought  back  to  Rome  and  thrown  into  the  arena.  As 
in  Athens  and  in  Babylon,  a  slave's  real  safeguard  lay  in 
his  market  value.  But  since  his  value  was  always  dimi- 
nishing as  he  grew  older,  the  temptation  to  abuse  him 
increased  with  his  age.  Cato  expressly  advises  shrewd 
husbandmen  to  get  rid  of  old  oxen  and  old  slaves,  and 
he  displays  more  anxiety  regarding  the  condition  of  his 
cattle  than  of  his  workmen.  As  the  labourer  passed 
from  hand  to  hand  he  deteriorated  in  the  process,  until 
the  day  came  when  it  was  useless  to  offer  him  for  sale  in 
the  market,  in  which,  perhaps,  he  had  been  already 
bought  and  sold  a  dozen  times.  Although,  as  we  saw, 
it  has  been  supposed  that  the  average  duration  of  the  life 
of  those  whose  labour  was  greatest  and  treatment  worst 
must  have  been  short,  nevertheless  many  of  the  robuster 

*  Pignorius,  32.    "Tene  me  ne  fugiam  et  revoca  me  in  foro  Traiani  in 
purpuretica  ad  Pascasium  dominum  meum  "  {Orelli,  2832). 


ROME  291 

sort  reached  middle  life  and  beyond  it.  During  the 
Empire,  for  instance,  legislation  of  a  more  humane 
kind  was  passed  in  favour  of  slave  women  who  were 
fifty  years  old.  In  any  well-conducted  farm  the  labourers 
who  were  still  vigorous,  and  therefore  valuable,  were 
doubtless  treated  with  at  least  the  care  which  was  be- 
stowed on  the  oxen.  Their  allowance  of  clothing,  salt, 
and  oil  was  sufficient,  and  we  know  that  they  received 
about  four  Roman  bushels  of  wheat  per  month  ;  but  it 
was  the  poorest  wheat.  Likewise,  Cato  advises  the 
farmer  to  reserve  for  his  slaves  only  the  inferior  olives, 
from  which  the  least  oil  could  be  extracted,  and  even 
these  were  to  be  dealt  out  with  a  niggardly  hand.^  When, 
again,  we  are  told  that  slaves  drank  wine,  it  is  well  to 
remember  the  recipe  proposed  by  Cato.  For,  according 
to  him,  the  wine  of  slaves  consisted  of  a  mixture  in 
which  vinegar  and  sea-water  formed  the  largest  part. ^ 
The  lodgings  of  the  meaner  kind  of  workmen  are 
described  by  Columella,  who  gives  a  sketch  which  is 
probably  as  true  of  the  slave  barracks  in  the  town  as 
in  the  country.  The  building  was  underground,  and  it 
was  both  a  workshop  and  a  dormitory.  One  important 
feature  was  that  the  windows  were  so  high  that  no 
hands  could  reach  them  {ne  manu  contingi  possint).  And 
the  overseer  is  recommended,  even  by  Columella,  to  pay 
frequent  visits  in  order  to  assure  himself  that  the  in- 
mates are  securely  chained.^  If,  as  Seneca,  Tacitus,  and 
Pliny  inform  us,  Italy  owned  "  legions  of  slaves  "  (manci- 
piorum  legiones),  such  private  prisons  must  have  been  very 
numerous.  That  they  were  always  very  full  is  proved 
by  the  fact  that  when  once,  in  the  Senate,  it  was  pro- 
posed that  slaves  should  be  dressed  in  a  particular  livery 
in  order  to  distinguish  them  from  freemen,  the  proposal 

1  De  Re.  Rust.,  58.  «  Ibid.,  104. 

*  "An  diligenter vincta  {i.e.  mancipia)  sint"  {De  Re.  Rust.,  viii.). 


292  THE   NEMESIS   OF  NATIONS 

was  rejected  on  the  ground  that  thereby  the  servile 
classes  would  become  aware  of  their  numbers  and  their 
strength. 

34.  The  theory  of  slavery  which  is  announced  in 
Roman  law  is  remarkable  for  its  sincerity.  Unlike 
Aristotle,  the  Roman  jurists  made  no  attempt  to  invent 
a  casuistry  for  the  justification  of  the  servile  system. 
They  frankly  admitted  that  it  was  founded  upon  force, 
that  it  was  "  contrary  to  nature,"  ^  and  that  although 
according  to  the  "  Law  of  Nations "  some  men  might 
become  slaves,  according  to  the  *'  Law  of  Nature  "  "  all 
men  are  free."  ^  The  philosophical  dilemma  in  which 
the  Roman  lawyers  became  thus  involved  does  not  con- 
cern us  here,  but  it  marks  an  important  stage  in  the 
history  of  justice.  In  the  interpretation  and  in  the 
administration  of  the  Law  of  Rome  the  position  of  the 
slave  was  at  least  made  so  clear  that  no  misunderstanding 
was  possible.  According  to  the  Law  of  Persons,  mankind 
were  divided  into  two  great  classes,  the  free  and  the 
enslaved,^  and  slaves  were  either  offspring  of  slaves  or 
they  were  fallen  freemen.*  As  such  they  were  numbered 
among  res  mancipi.  In  other  words,  they  were  the  abso- 
lute property  of  their  owners.  They  were  devoid  of 
personality.  Hence  they  received  no  protection  either 
from  the  civil  law  or  from  the  Law  of  Nations.  Their 
position  was  such  that  during  many  centuries  a  demand 
for  their  protection  was  held  to  be  as  absurd  as  a  demand 
that  a  man's  furniture  should  be  protected  from  his 
violent  handling    of   it.      All    that    distinguished    them 

*  "  Servitus  autem  est  constitutio  juris  gentium,  qua  quis  dominio 
alieno  contra  naturam  subjicitur"  {Inst.,  I.  iii.  2). 

*  "  Quod  attinet  ad  jus  civile,  servi  pro  nullis  habentur  ;  non  tamen  et 
jure  naturali,  quia,  quod  ad  jus  naturale  attinet,  omnes  homines  asquales 
sunt "  {Dig.,  L.  xvii.  32). 

»  Inst.  I.  Tit.  iii. 

*  "  Aut  nascuntur  aut  fiunt"  (ibid.,  I.  iii.  4). 


ROME  293 

from  his  other  possessions  was  that  they  were  animate 
and  articulate.  They  were  even  devoid  of  a  name  until 
their  masters  chose  to  give  one  to  them  {seruis  nullum 
nomen).  They  were  incapable  of  possessing  property  or 
of  inheriting  it.  If  they  received  a  legacy  it  fell  im- 
mediately to  the  master.  No  doubt  the  master  fre- 
quently allowed  the  slave  to  retain  the  peculium  or  petty 
fortune  which  was  the  result  of  the  slave's  own  economies 
in  his  daily  rations.  Sometimes,  in  order  to  stimulate 
his  activity,  even  a  donation  was  presented  to  him,  but 
it  was  as  often  withdrawn  if  there  was  any  sign  of 
slackened  energy.  In  many  cases  the  peculium  was  sur- 
rendered as  the  first  instalment  of  the  price  of  freedom. 
Even,  however,  if  it  reached  a  considerable  sum  it  never 
legally  belonged  to  the  slave. ^  Supposing  a  master 
handed  over  half  his  property  to  his  slave,  the  law  still 
refused  to  recognise  the  latter  as  a  proprietor  until  he 
became  free.  And  when  freedom  was  granted  it  was 
held  as  precariously  as  the  peculium.  Nothing  indicates 
more  clearly  the  extraordinary  authority  which  the 
Roman  citizen  had  arrogated  to  himself  than  the  fact 
that  he  was  capable  not  only  of  creating  another  citizen 
out  of  the  man  who  had  been  his  slave  but  of  recalling 
him  at  will  into  slavery.  If,  indeed,  the  emancipation 
had  taken  place  before  a  magistrate  and  according  to 
strict  legal  usage,  the  ex-slave  was  henceforth  a  freedman. 
But  the  taint  of  slavery  remained  till  the  third  genera- 
tion. The  freedman  was  forbidden  to  wear  the  toga  or 
to  marry  into  a  patrician  family.  And  in  the  majority 
of  cases  the  master  reserved  rights  which  bound  the 
slave  to  a  lifetime  of  service.  If  he  engaged  in  busi- 
ness it  was  rather  as  an  agent  than  as  a  principal,  and 
if  he  died  the  master  was  the  heir  of  a  large  part  of 
the   property.     Liberation,    indeed,   was   often   the   best 

^  Ihering,  ii.  173, 


294  THE   NEMESIS   OF   NATIONS 

policy  for  the  slave-owner.     Thereby  he  gained  a  per- 
centage  of  the  profits  of  the  business  carried  on  by  a 
clever   slave   whose   place  was  easily  filled  by  others  of 
his  kind.     The  freedman  was  thus  subjected  to  an  irk- 
some surveillance  by  his  former  lord,  to  whom  he  paid  a 
tax  for  liberty.      During  the  Empire  it  was  specially  ad- 
vantageous for  the  master  to  emancipate  his  slave,  because 
the  latter  when  he  became  a  citizen  was  allowed  a  citizen's 
share  in  the  free  distributions  of  oil  and  corn,  and  it  need 
hardly  be  said  that  his  first  duty  was  to  satisfy  the  claims 
thereto  of  his  former  owner.     Both  thus  became  parasites 
on   the  State.     Men   who   had   spent   their  lives  in   the 
meanest  subjection  were  suddenly  elevated  to  the  high 
rank  of  Roman   citizenship,  and  constant  additions  were 
made  to  the  crowd  of  idlers  who  infested  the  city.     In 
the   end    the   servile   system   created,   indeed,   a   strange 
dilemma,  because  the  act  of  justice  which  emancipated 
the  slave   became   really  a   danger  to  the  State.     Slaves 
had   ousted    freemen  from  the   industries,    the  arts,  and 
the  liberal  professions,  and  now  they  elbowed  the  haughty 
citizens  of   Rome.      The  national  unity  was  destroyed, 
because  a  crowd  of  men  belonging  to  inferior  races  were 
made  the  ignorant  heirs  of  a  tradition  in  which  they  had 
no  genuine  interest.      The  problem   became   rapidly   so 
acute  that  even  in  the  reign  of  Augustus  it  was  found 
necessary  to  make  emancipation  as  difficult  as  possible, 
and  in  the  year  a.d.  8  there  was  passed  a  law  which,  as 
we  have  seen,  forbade  any  citizen  to  liberate  more  than  a 
hundred  of  his  slaves.     A  moral  and  economic  revolu- 
tion had  become  necessary  before  the  entire  system,  with 
the  numerous  social  evils  which  it  had  created,  could  be 
swept  away.     That  system  had  found  its  greatest  support 
in    Roman    law ;  for    law    remains   fixed   while    opinion 
changes,  or  it  moves  only  by  slow  stages  of  amelioration. 
In  the  age  of  Constantine  it  was  legal  to  amputate  the 


ROME  295 

feet  of  fugitive  slaves.^  A  few  facts  taken  at  random 
enable  us  to  see  how  difficult  it  must  have  been  for  the 
State  to  interfere  with  the  private  treatment  of  men  who 
at  its  own  hands  received  a  treatment  no  less  barbarous. 
If,  for  instance,  a  master  had  been  assassinated  by  a 
slave,  it  was  legal  to  condemn  to  death  by  crucifixion  all 
the  slaves  who  happened  to  be  in  the  house  at  the  time. 
Till  long  after  the  age  of  Sulla  killing  a  slave  was  no 
murder,  and  it  was  not  until  the  time  of  Antoninus 
Pius  that  he  who  killed  his  own  slave  without  cause  was 
to  be  judged  as  if  he  had  killed  the  slave  of  another 
man.^  The  phraseology  of  the  enactment  betrays  how 
timidly  the  work  of  reform  began.  For  it  could  not 
have  been  difficult  for  a  master  to  prove  that  he  had  had 
cause  for  his  act.  Moreover,  during  many  generations 
the  murderer  of  a  slave  was  required  only  to  pay  to  the 
owner  the  slave's  market  price,  and  it  was  not  until  the 
reign  of  Claudius  that  a  man  who  had  murdered  his  own 
slave  was  considered  to  be  guilty  of  murder  at  all.  In 
Rome,  as  in  Babylon,  if  a  slave  were  injured  an  indemnity 
was  paid  to  the  master,  and  its  amount  was  half  the 
amount  payable  in  the  case  of  injury  to  a  freeman. 
Again,  until  the  edict  of  Theodoric  there  was  no  punish-  454-526 
ment  for  outrage  on  female  slaves  unless  they  were  ^'^' 
children.  There  is  every  reason  for  supposing  that 
sometimes  it  was  encouraged.  And  yet,  although  all 
kinds  of  slaves  were  thus  so  frequently  in  danger  from 
the  violence  of  their  masters,  they  were  expected  to 
render  assistance  when  those  same  masters  were  in  danger 
from  the  violence  of  other  men,  and  a  refusal  was 
punished  by  law. 

^  "  Si  fugitivi  servi  deprehenduntur  ad  barbaricum  transeuntes,  aut 
pede  amputato  debilitentur  aut  metallo  dentur  aut  qualibet  alia  poena 
adficiantur"  (Cod.,  vi.  i,  3). 

^  Inst.  I.  viii.  2. 


296  THE   NEMESIS   OF   NATIONS 

35.  It  is  scarcely  necessary  to  add  that  the  slave 
laboured  under  complete  civil  disability.  He  was  in- 
capable of  entering  into  any  contract.  If  it  could  be 
proved  that  he  had  acted  under  orders  the  contract  was, 
indeed,  binding  upon  his  master.  But  the  peculiar 
injustice  of  the  law  is  seen  in  the  fact  that  when  an 
unauthorised  transaction  on  the  part  of  the  slave  had 
advantageous  results  the  master  could  claim  the  profits. 
On  the  other  hand,  if  the  transaction  involved  a  loss  the 
master  could  repudiate  it.  Hence  he  was  able  to  choose 
whether  in  a  given  instance  he  should  or  should  not 
declare  that  his  slave  had  or  had  not  been  acting  as 
his  agent.  Although  the  slave  was  thus  capable  of 
rational  activities,  he  was  not  in  the  eyes  of  the  law  a 
rational  being.  His  declarations  as  a  witness  were  of  no 
value  unless  they  had  been  wrung  from  him  by  torture.^ 
In  Rome,  as  in  Athens,  the  law  courts  were  the  scene 
of  a  formidable  inquisition.  The  petitioner  and  the 
defendant  could  demand  the  slaves  of  his  opponent 
to  be  examined  by  means  of  torture,  the  main  object 
of  which  was  to  compel  the  victim  to  change  his 
declarations.^  The  torture,  in  fact,  was  employed  by 
way  of  cross-examination.  In  the  event  of  mutilation 
damages  were  paid  to  the  owner,  and  in  the  case  of 
death  not  less  than  double  the  market  value  of  the 
slave  could  be  legally  demanded.  In  the  reign  of 
Augustus  masters  were  forbidden  to  emancipate  their 
slaves  in  order  to  save  them  from  being  tortured  as 
witnesses.  Later  some  modifications  were  introduced, 
especially  on  behalf  of  women  and  children,  and  in  a 
curious  phrase  "  restricted  torture "  {tormenta  moderatd) 
is  recommended.     The  names  of  the  instruments  which 

^  "  Quaestionem  intellegere  debemus  tormenta  et  corporis  dolorem  ad 
eruendam  veritatem"  {Dig.,  xlvii.  10,  41). 
*  Mommsen,  Romisches  Stra/rechl,  416. 


ROME  297 

were  employed  seem,  however,  to  indicate  immoderate 
suffering  ;  for  among  them  were  forceps  and  hooks  for 
tearing  the  flesh,  fidicuU  or  metal  strings  for  producing 
ligature,  and  the  rack  {eculeus)  for  dislocation. 

36.  If   we    now   glance    at    the   upper   structure   of 
Roman  society  we  shall  find  that  in  Rome,  as  in  every 
other  great  community  of  the  ancient  world,  the  slaves 
were  the  creators  of  wealth  which  they  did  not  share. 
We  have  seen  that  there  was  scarcely  an  industry  or  an 
art    in    which    their    activity   was    unrepresented.     And 
if  their  labour  had  been  interrupted  for  a  moment  the 
entire  organisation  of  the  State  would  have  been  thrown 
into    confusion.     Slavery,  which   was    described    as    the 
great  agent  of  death  {jnortis  minister)^  was  likewise  the 
minister  of  leisure  and  luxury.     The  actual  solid  struc- 
ture of  the  city  of  Rome  was  its   work.     For  whereas 
it   is   probable    that    the    original   Palatine   city   and    its 
walls,  and  even  the  later  walls  and  buildings  of  Servius 
TuUius,   had   been   partly   built   by   freemen,   the   walls 
of  Aurelian  (a.d.  270-275)  and  the  magnificent  palaces, 
temples,    and    theatres    of    imperial    Rome    were    built 
by  slaves.     Indeed,  the  widening  circle  of  the  walls  of 
Rome  symbolised  the  wider  dominion  of  a  city  which, 
once  a   hamlet,   became    at    last    a   State,   whose   needs 
required    throughout    many    generations    the    constant 
labour    of   millions    of   men.     The   history   of   Roman 
architecture    forms    a    part    of    the  history    of   Roman 
slavery.      If   even    many    of    her    best    architects    were 
slaves,^  we  can  imagine  the  numberless  gangs  of  work- 
men— the   engineers,   the    quarrymen,   the    masons,   the 
bricklayers,  the  plumbers,  and  the  carpenters — who  were 
compelled  to  serve  her.     It  was  during  the  Empire  that 
buildings  were  undertaken  on  such  a  scale  that   Rome 
became  one  of  the  new  wonders   of  the  world.     Even 
^  Marquardt,  Das  Privat  Leben,  ii.  613. 


298  THE   NEMESIS   OF  NATIONS 

in  later  years  of  the  Republic  there  had  been  such 
activity  in  building  that  the  price  of  land  within  the 
walls  had  risen  enormously,  and  for  the  mere  site  of  his 
Forum  Cassar  paid  about  a  million  sterling.^  Each  suc- 
cessive emperor,  with  a  few  exceptions,  attempted  to 
outrival  the  works  of  his  predecessor,  until  at  last  if 
Nebuchadnezzar  had  risen  from  the  grave  to  see  Rome 
he  would  have  found  her  worthy  of  his  own  Babylon. 
And,  indeed,  her  palaces  and  her  markets  became  so 
full  of  the  stuffs  of  the  East,  and  her  whole  social 
scheme  became  so  Oriental,  that  Nebuchadnezzar  would 
have  felt  himself  at  home.  For  although  Rome  em- 
ployed Greek  architects,  and  plundered  the  temples 
of  Greece,  and  aped  Greek  manners,  she  never  under- 
stood Greek  art  or  took  any  delight  in  it.  Nero 
dreamed  of  making  her  a  second  Babylon,  and  wished 
to  call  her  Neropolis.  Her  own  artistic  instincts  were 
almost  barbaric,  and  she  chose  Oriental  in  preference  to 
Hellenic  decoration.  Her  colossal  public  buildings  re- 
called the  great  structures  of  Babylon,  and  involved  the 
same  amount  of  servile  labour.  Utility,  not  superficial 
beauty,  was  the  fundamental  principle  at  least  of  the 
architecture  of  her  amphitheatres.  The  Circus  Maximus 
accommodated  285,000  spectators,  and  the  Colosseum 
not  less  than  87,000.  In  her  vast  public  warehouses 
she  was  able  to  store  millions  of  bushels  of  grain.  As 
the  city  grew  greater  the  size  and  the  splendour  of 
the  national  buildings  were  increased.  The  Forum  of 
Augustus,  with  its  inner  fa9ades  of  dazzling  white  marble, 
was  doubtless  a  noble  structure,  but  the  Forum  of  Trajan 
was  conceived  on  a  grander  scale.  In  order  merely  to 
prepare  its  site,  the  ridge  of  tufa  rock  which  connected 
the  Capitol  and  the  Quirinal  was  removed  by  the  labour 
of  thousands  of  slaves.     There  is  some  controversy  re- 

*  Suet.,  Cccs.,  26. 


ROME  299 

garding  the  original  height  of  that  ridge,  but  whether 
or  not  it  had  reached  the  height  of  the  column  of 
Trajan,  which  commemorated  the  work,  the  labour 
involved  in  its  reduction  must  have  been  enormous  if, 
as  some  writers  have  calculated,  more  than  20,000,000 
cubic  feet  of  earth  had  been  removed.  The  labour,  how- 
ever, which  went  to  create  a  building  like  Trajan's 
Forum  was  not  confined  to  Italy.  Some  of  the  marble 
columns  which  flanked  the  great  square  had  been  quarried 
by  slaves  in  Egypt,  Greece,  and  the  Greek  islands,  and 
had  been  transported  by  slaves  in  ships  which  slaves 
had  expressly  built  for  the  purpose.  The  buildings 
surrounding  the  Forum,  such  as  the  Basilica  and  the 
two  libraries,  were  roofed  with  gilt  bronze,  and  the 
cost  of  every  detail  of  this  and  of  every  other  elaborate 
design  of  Roman  architecture  was  only  the  inferior  food 
of  the  workmen.^  Ancient  writers  frankly  admit  that 
all  such  great  buildings  were  paid  for  by  the  spoils 
of  conquest  {de  manubiis),  but  the  living  spoils  in 
the  shape  of  prisoners  were  the  chief  agents  in  their 
erection. 

37.  Augustus  set  up  in  the  heart  of  the  city  a  golden 
milestone  {milliarium  aureum)^  or  rather  a  Terminus  pillar, 
which  was  the  meeting-point  of  all  the  great  Roman 
roads.  Every  one  of  those  roads,  which  connected  the 
metropolis  with  the  west,  middle,  and  east  of  Europe, 
was  made  and  kept  in  repair  by  chained  gangs  of  road- 
makers  and  road-menders,  who,  since  they  were  employed 
in  the  opus  publicum,  or  public  works,  were  branded  with 
the  seal  of  the  State.  On  the  main  highways  there  were 
slave  couriers  who,  under  the  supervision  of  postmasters 
{junctor es  jumentarii),  carried  the  royal  mail  to  different 
parts  of  the  Empire,  and  brought  back  the  news  from 
the  provinces.     Some  of  the  roads  were  built  on  a  solid 

^  Middleton,  ii.  318. 


300  THE   NEMESIS   OF  NATIONS 

basis  of  tufa  blocks,  and  were  provided  with  milestones 
which  recorded  the  distance  from  the  city's  gates.  Such, 
for  instance,  was  the  Via  Appia,  which  joined  Rome  and 
Capua,  and  was  ultimately  extended  to  Brindisi  and  the 
sea.  That  was  the  quickest  mail  route  to  the  East,  and 
at  the  coast  ships  lay  ready  to  sail  for  Egypt  and  the 
ports  of  Asia,  Asia  Minor,  and  Greece.  All  the  great 
caravan  routes  which  had  once  found  their  terminus  at 
Babylon  and  at  Nineveh  thus  found  their  new  terminus 
at  Rome.  One  of  those  startling  facts  which  prove  the 
courage  and  energy  of  ancient  traders  is  that  over  the 
long  roads,  which  had  once  seen  the  caravans  moving 
slowly  towards  Babylon,  new  teams  brought  regular  sup- 
plies of  silk  from  China  and  muslin  from  India  for  the 
markets  of  Rome.  Likewise,  a  new  generation  of  sailors 
on  the  Persian  Gulf  and  the  Euphrates,  up  the  Red  Sea 
and  along  the  old  coasts  of  Tyre  and  Sidon,  were  carrying 
freights  for  a  new  generation  of  rulers,  who  had  trans- 
ferred the  seat  of  the  world's  government  from  the  East 
to  the  West.  From  the  end  of  the  Republic  till  the  end 
of  the  Empire  Rome  was  the  new  world  market  and  the 
centre  of  finance.  Her  trade  was  carried  on  in  three 
continents,  and  reached  from  India  to  Britain.  Horace 
records  with  astonishment  the  fact  that  three  and  four 
times  within  a  single  year  Roman  merchants  set  sail 
for  the  Atlantic.^  They  brought  back  tin  and  other 
commodities  from  Britain.  The  dogs  of  Scotland,  for 
instance,  were  highly  prized  at  Rome,  and  every  country 
was  made  to  deliver  up  its  special  products.  Although 
the  Africa  which  Rome  knew  was  only  a  strip,  and 
although  Africa's  best  protection  for  that  gold  which 
still  excites  modern  finance  was  the  wide  open  gate  of 
her  desert,  still,  the  rumour  of  African  gold  had  reached 

^  "  Dis  carus  (mercator)  ipsis,  quippe  ter  et  quater 

Anno  revisens  aequor  Atlanticum  Impune" — {^Odes^  i.  31). 


ROME  301 

Rome,  and  gold-dust  was  sold  to  her  goldsmiths.-^ 
Although,  too,  the  negro  race  appear  to  have  escaped 
the  Roman  slave-hunters  to  await  those  of  Christian 
Europe,  yet  Rome  had  inherited  the  slaves  of  Carthage, 
and  they  were  now  at  work  for  her  in  the  marble 
quarries  of  Numidia  and  the  mines  of  Spain.  Even  in 
the  days  of  the  Republic  some  40,000  men  were  kept 
chained  in  the  Spanish  silver  mines.  But  the  Empire 
was  the  heir  of  all  those  lands  which  the  Republic  con- 
quered, and  their  potential  wealth  became  the  Imperial 
Treasury.  In  the  triumphant  processions  of  Roman 
generals  captives  from  all  the  world's  great  nations  were 
paraded  before  the  citizens,  and  the  day  came  when  a 
Roman  poet  could,  without  exaggeration,  ask  a  Roman 
emperor  if  there  was  any  people  so  remote  or  so  bar- 
barous as  not  to  have  a  representative  at  Rome.'  She 
became  the  patron  of  all  arts  and  industries,  and  was  to 
Europe  what  Babylon  had  once  been  to  Asia.  Let  us 
not  forget,  however,  that  it  was  the  obscure  labour  of 
thousands  of  nameless  unpaid  mechanics  which  made  her 
great  and  gay  for  the  zenith. 

38.  Centuries  had  passed  since  the  rude  Roman  fore- 
fathers had  attempted  to  drain  the  marsh-lands  of  the 
Tiber,  and  now  an  army  of  slaves  were  kept  at  work  on 
the  great  hydraulic  system  which  controlled  the  water 
supply  of  Rome.  The  fourteen  aqueducts  which  pro- 
vided daily  a  volume  of  more  than  50,000,000  cubic 
feet  of  water,  and  kept  numerous  fountains  playing  in 
the  pleasure-grounds  of  the  city,  were  built  by  servile 
labour.  A  special  aqueduct  fifty  miles  long  brought 
water  to  the  artificial  waterfalls  of  Nero's  palace  on  the 

MDuruy,  p.  89. 

^  "  Quae  tarn  seposita  est,  quse  gens  tarn  barbara,  Caesar, 
Ex  qua  spectator  non  sit  in  urbe  tua  ?" 

—Martial,  De  Spect.^  iii. 


302  THE   NEMESIS   OF   NATIONS 

Palatine,  and  his  sea-baths  were  connected  with  the 
Mediterranean,  which  was  distant  sixteen  miles.  Slaves 
were  excluded,  except  as  attendants,  from  the  great 
imperial  public  baths  which  slaves  had  built.  A  special 
aqueduct  fed  the  baths  of  Caracalla,  which,  although  not 
the  largest,  were  yet  able  to  accommodate  about  1600 
bathers,  and  were  most  sumptuously  fitted.  Sixty-four 
cisterns,  each  of  which  was  50  feet  long,  28  feet  wide, 
and  30  feet  high,^  formed  the  reservoir,  and  by  an 
elaborate  system  of  heating  and  of  plumber's  work  the 
water  could  be  made  tepid,  warm,  or  hot  according  as 
the  bather  desired.  The  floors  of  the  great  rooms  and 
halls  were  of  porphyry  and  marble,  and  the  bronze  roofs 
were  supported  by  pillars  of  granite  and  alabaster.  The 
tepidarium^  or  warm  room,  and  the  sudarium^  or  sweating- 
room,  for  luxurious  bathers  would  have  astonished  those 
old  republican  senators  who  used  to  carry  on  the  affairs 
of  the  State  in  a  senate-house  in  which,  even  during  the 
coldest  Roman  winter,  no  fire  was  ever  kindled.  They 
would  have  been  still  more  surprised  to  see  the  fashion- 
able men  of  the  new  Rome  going  through  an  elaborate 
toilet  in  those  baths,  where  they  were  served  by  a  host 
of  slaves — washmen,  anointers,  shampooers,  hairdressers, 
and  manicurists — who  had  become  the  indispensable  min- 
isters of  elegance.  When  we  remember  that  the  baths 
of  Diocletian,  built  on  an  even  greater  scale  than  those 
of  Nero  or  of  Caracalla,  could  receive  at  one  time 
as  many  as  3200  bathers,  we  shall  be  able  to  guess 
how  much  had  been  done  for  the  comfort  of  Roman 
citizens.  For  the  baths  were  more  than  baths.  Within 
their  immense  enclosures  were  to  be  found  restaurants, 
gymnasia,  lounges,  reading-rooms,  elaborate  gardens,  and 
promenades.  Crowds  of  slaves,  from  stoker  to  masseur^ 
formed   the  permanent  service  staff.     That  service  was 

^  Middleton,  ii.  171. 


ROME  303 

so  perfect,  and  the  entire  organisation  was  so  up-to-date, 
that  it  is  no  wonder  if  the  citizens  waited  impatiently 
for  the  sounding  of  the  great  bell  (^j  thermaruni)  which 
announced  the  opening  of  the  doors. 

39.  It  has  been  calculated  that  the  imperial  city 
contained  about  twenty-five  and  a  half  acres  of  open 
spaces/  which  included  the  great  Forums  and  some  of 
the  finest  arches,  statues,  and  temples.  Her  inhabitants 
probably  numbered  about  2,000,000,  but  the  vast  majority 
were  slaves,  for  whom  such  pleasure-grounds  were  never 
constructed.  Excluded  except  as  public  or  private  ser- 
vants from  the  baths,  the  gardens  and  the  theatres, 
they  were  also  excluded  from  the  great  colonnades  which 
occupied  three  miles  of  the  Campus  Martius,  and  pro- 
vided shelter  in  the  heat.  The  pavements  of  the  porticoes 
were  of  porphyry  and  jasper,  and  the  capitals  of  the  two 
thousand  marble  columns  were  of  gilt  brass.  Greek, 
chisels  had  adorned  these  and  other  great  buildings 
dedicated  to  the  gods  of  the  State.  On  the  Palatine 
there  was  a  Temple  of  Apollo,  built  of  Carrara  marble, 
and  the  god's  chariot  of  bronze  on  the  top  of  the 
pediment  might  be  seen  gleaming  in  the  sunshine.  But 
neither  in  that  temple  nor  in  the  Temple  of  Capitoline 
Jupiter,  nor  at  the  shrines  dedicated  to  Roma  Sterna 
and  Venus  Felix,  could  the  fugitive  slave  find  any  asylum, 
even  although  slaves  had  built  every  one  of  them.  There 
was  a  Temple  of  Concord,  which  must  likewise  have  been 
their  handiwork,  and  it  is  described  as  a  marble  master- 
piece. But  it  seemed  strangely  out  of  place  in  a  com- 
munity in  which  the  social  discord  had  been  steadily 
increasing  for  generations.  Slaves  had  prayed  in  vain 
to  ineffectual  gods  whose  statues  they  had  helped  to  set 
up.  Half  of  the  gods  of  the  world,  indeed,  had  found  a 
new  residence  in  Rome.  But  just  as  the  churches  of 
^  Lanciani,  "  Ancient  Rome,"  p.  89. 


304  THE   NEMESIS   OF   NATIONS 

London  are  losing  touch  with  the  life  and  thoughts  of 
her  vast  populace,  so  the  worship  of  many  old  Roman 
gods  was  treated  with  indifference.  There  had  arisen 
new  problems  which  the  old  faith  could  not  solve,  and 
there  was  no  longer  any  genuine  relation  between  the 
national  religion  and  the  nation's  life,  Rome,  indeed, 
had  become  so  full  of  statues  and  busts  that,  in  the 
pleasing  exaggeration  of  an  ancient  writer,  they  were  as 
numerous  as  the  inhabitants.  But  the  ruling  class  had 
become  as  impassive  to  human  suffering  as  these  effigies 
of  gods  and  statesmen.  In  her  attempt  to  allow  no- 
thing to  escape  her,  Rome  had  even  brought  from 
Zion  the  golden  vessels  and  the  seven-branched  candle- 
stick which  had  once  done  service  for  Jehovah,  and 
had  placed  them  in  the  Temple  of  Peace  in  the  Forum  of 
Peace.  In  a  kind  of  magnificent  tolerance,  which,  how- 
ever, was  only  weakness,  she  welcomed  the  gods  of  Africa 
and  of  Asia  and  their  devotees,  and  even  astrologers 
calling  themselves  of  Babylon  were  summoned  to  the 
council  of  her  emperors.^  But  this  search  for  new 
emotions,  and  this  vast  spiritual  confusion  which  the 
Christian  religion  helped  to  deepen,  were  only  signs  of 
the  social  chaos  which  was  accumulating.  Perhaps  in 
no  city,  not  even  in  Babylon  or  in  London,  has  the 
contrast  between  human  wealth  and  pride  and  human 
sorrow  been  so  violent.  In  her  financial  might,  and  as 
the  seat  of  speculators,  a  great  writer  has  compared 
her  to  London,  but  in  her  usury  she  dealt  not  merely 
in  money  but  in  men.  There  can  be  no  doubt  that  her 
progress  as  a  rakish  and  spendthrift  city  was  accelerated 
by  her  contact  with  the  East.  The  education  of  her 
children  was,  at  least  till  the  creation  of  public  schools 
under   the   Empire,^  chiefly   conducted    by  slaves   from 

^  Juvenal,  x.  94  ;  vi.  553. 

*  Boissier,  La  Fin  du  Faganisme^  i,  175  sqq. 


ROME  305 

Greece,  Asia   Minor,   and  Asia,  and  a  strange  and  dan- 
gerous blending  of  temperaments  was  the  result.     Her 
trade,  too,  was  an  import  trade,  and  it  consisted  chiefly 
of  objects  of  Oriental   luxury,  with  which   the  children 
of  the  wealthiest  citizens  became  familiar  while  still  in 
the  arms  of  their  nurses.     In  a  passage  of  quaint  beauty 
the  elder  Pliny  likens  the  Tiber  to  a  contented  merchant 
{tnercator  placidissimus)  who  receives  the  goods  of  the  entire 
world.     It  is  often  said  that  Roman  commerce  was  only 
passive,  and  the  saying  is  true  in   the  sense  that   Rome 
exported    nothing.       But    Italian     industries    were    very 
ancient,   and  although   the  free   industrial   classes   were, 
at  least  during  a  long   period,  almost  wholly   displaced 
by  slaves,  many  native  factories  were   kept   busy  during 
the  Empire.     Some  of  the  old  guilds,  such  as  the  shoe- 
makers,   boasted   that   they  had    received    their   charter 
from   Numa,   and    it    is    interesting  to  note   that    even 
during  the  Empire  the  shoemakers  and  other  workers  in 
leather  were   freemen.      Italy  cannot   have  been  wholly 
unproductive  as  long  as  agricultural  implements,  military 
boots,  weapons,  harness,  lamps,  and  pottery  were  manu- 
factured, and  carpenters,  bricklayers,  cutlers,  goldsmiths, 
weavers,    and    dyers    remained    busy.     In    Rome    itself 
there  was  a  street  called  the  "  Street  of  the  Glassmakers  " 
{vicus  vitrarius).     But  she  consumed  all  that  she  created. 
Moreover,  her  artisans  were  chiefly  foreign  slaves,  who  thus 
profited  by  a  technical  education  which  was  lost  to  the 
Romans.      In  the   great  region  of  industry  Rome    was 
represented   by   proxy,   and  as   she   grew   richer   by   the 
plunder  of  other  States,  the  tendency  was  to  encourage 
those  industries  which  produced  articles  of  luxury.     For 
instance,   only  the   coarsest   kinds    of   linen   stuffs   were 
manufactured  in  Italy,  and  all  the  finest  webs  came  from 
Syria.     Silk  materials  were  likewise  imported  in  enormous 
quantities,  and  when,  as  late   as  the  sixth  century  a.d., 

u 


3o6  THE   NEMESIS   OF   NATIONS 

the  Emperor  Justinian  encouraged  silk-weaving,  the  in- 
dustry was  set  up  not  in  Rome,  which  had  already  fallen, 
but  in  Byzantium.  Although  it  seems  that  Oriental 
fabrics  were  sometimes  subjected  to  new  industrial  pro- 
cesses in  Italy,  Rome  was  generally  content  to  receive 
ready-made  goods.  In  the  Portico  of  the  Septa  were  to  be 
found  the  rich  dealers  who  sold  special  products  of  the 
East — fabrics  and  furniture  of  all  kinds,  handsome  slaves, 
Greek  busts,  Phoenician  purple,  ivory,  crystal,  porcelain, 
and  perfume.  Since  at  great  Roman  banquets  perfume 
was  sprinkled  on  the  guests,  the  finest  and  most  rare 
scents  of  the  East  and  myrrh  and  cinnabar  were  in  great 
demand.  Incense  came  from  Arabia,  and  from  Cyrene 
attar  of  roses.  In  the  two  hundred  and  ninety  public 
warehouses  luxuries  and  necessities  lay  stored.  Domitian 
even  built  a  storehouse  for  Eastern  spices,  and  in  the 
national  granaries  millions  of  bushels  of  foreign  wheat 
were  kept  ready  for  distribution.  Owing  to  the  great 
concentration  of  landed  property  the  land  had  ceased  to 
be  productive,  and  there  was  practically  no  Italian  harvest. 
In  the  reign  of  Augustus  48,115,000  bushels  of  grain 
were  imported  from  Egypt,  and  sufficed  only  for  four 
months.  The  wine,  wool,  oil,  pottery,  honey,  and 
sulphur  of  Italy  were  certainly  incapable  of  balancing  the 
vast  importation  of  all  those  commodities  which  Rome 
required.  Her  payments  were  made  in  gold.  The 
vineyards  of  the  Mediterranean,  of  Syria,  and  of  Greece 
gave  her  wine  ;  Sicily  gave  wheat  in  vast  quantities, 
beef,  oil,  and  wool  ;  cheese,  honey,  and  wine  came  from 
Switzerland  ;  and  from  Spain,  gold  and  silver,  copper  and 
iron,  wool,  horses,  and  wheat.  Even  the  shores  of  the 
Dead  Sea  were  made  to  contribute  asphalt  for  embalming, 
and  the  quarries  of  Greece,  which  Phidias  had  inspected, 
yielded  new  blocks  of  marble.  The  pearls  and  jewels 
which    the    goldsmiths    offered   in   the  Via   Sacra    came 


ROME  307 

from  the  Orient.  Rome,  in  herself  inartistic,  enslaved 
art  and  artists  for  her  own  purpose.  Her  barbaric 
delight  in  vivid  colouring,  which,  for  instance,  was  ex- 
hibited in  the  gold  and  scarlet  decoration  on  the  great 
column  of  Trajan,  was  stimulated  by  this  Eastern  com- 
merce. Although  Babylon  and  Nineveh  were  long  gone, 
their  name  and  trade-mark  were  still  given  to  goods 
which  brought  great  prices  in  the  Roman  market.  Even 
in  the  age  of  Lucretius  vast  sums  were  spent  on  "  Baby- 
lonian coverlets,"  ^  and  in  the  age  of  Juvenal  luxurious 
Romans  bought  "  down  of  Sardanapalus."  ^  By  her 
commerce,  as  by  her  policy,  Rome  brought  the  East 
and  the  West  into  the  closest  contact  which  they  had 
known. 

40.  The  effect  of  the  hurried  influx  of  so  many 
luxuries  has  been  the  theme  of  many  moralists,  and 
we  shall  not  dwell  upon  it.  We  are  more  interested 
in  the  fact  that  that  luxury  was  mainly  if  not  altogether 
the  product  of  unpaid  labour.  It  is,  however,  right  to 
notice  all  the  forces  which  gradually  denationalise  a  nation, 
and  to  ask  why  Rome  ceased  to  be  Rome.  Recently 
attempts  have  been  made  to  darken  the  lights  on  the 
picture  of  her  luxury,  and  we  have  been  warned  that 
Juvenal  is  a  misleading  guide.^  A  distinguished  scholar 
maintains  that  Juvenal  "  treated  abnormal  specimens  as 
types,"  and  that  therefore  he  does  not  deserve  "  implicit 
trust."  *  We  prefer  to  believe  with  Gibbon  that  Juvenal 
is  trustworthy,  and  that  he  "  painted  from  the  life."  ^ 
The  truth  probably  is  that  Juvenal  deserves  as  much 
confidence  as  Regnier  or  Laclos.  Juvenal  was  too  great 
an  artist  not  to  know  that  in  art  the  abnormal  should 


1  IV.  1 122.  2  "  Pluma  Sardanapali"  (Sat.  x.  362). 

'  Boissier,  U Opposition  sous  les  Cesar s^  pp.  317  sqq. 
*  Dill,  "Roman  Society  from  Nero  to  Marcus  Aurelius,"  p.  65. 
^  Ch.  xxxi.  p.  284. 


3o8  THE   NEMESIS   OF   NATIONS 

never  occupy  the   place  of  the   normal,  and  that  satire 
fails  in  proportion  as  it  becomes  caricature.     It  is  true 
that  the   Empire  was,   or    appeared   to   be,  *'  erect    ten 
generations  after  Juvenal  and  the  objects  of  his  loath- 
ing were  in  their  graves."  ^     But  ten  generations  in  the 
lifetime  of  a   State   are   only  as   ten   years  in   the  life- 
time of  an  individual,  and  the  good  physician  is  he  who 
detects  the  sleeping  germs  of  the  disease.     It  required 
a    long    succession    of    moral    maladies    to    shake    the 
frame  of  so  powerful  a  people.     The  symptoms  which 
Juvenal  diagnosed  were  visible  long  before  the  Republic 
fell,  and  yet  the  Republic  fell  only  to  rise  again   in  a 
new  form  by  the  help  of  the  genius  of  a  single  man. 
The  latent  weaknesses   of  the   structure,    however,  had 
not  been  provided  for  in  the  new  lease  of  life,  and  the 
lease   had   scarcely   been   renewed   when   they   began   to 
make  themselves  felt.     Juvenal  is  by  no  means  isolated 
in  his  view  of  Roman  society.     He  belonged  to  a  small 
group  of  deeper   thinkers   who,   although  separated   by 
time,  were  united  in  spirit.     From  Cato  to  Ammianus 
Marcellinus,  those  men,  among  whom  Lucilius,  Horace, 
Seneca,   and    Tacitus    are    numbered,    felt    the   pressure 
of  some  of  the  problems  of  ancient  life  and  of  Rome, 
and   were    profoundly   conscious   of  the   tragedy   which 
lay  hidden   in   the   heart   of  the   State.      We   prefer   to 
trust  men  who  had  the  scene  under  their  eyes.     If,  for 
instance,  we  trust  Juvenal  (and  if  we  have  imagination 
we  are  bound  to  trust  him)  when  he  portrays  to  the  life 
an  upstart  waving  a  hand  in  the  air  on  the  pretence  of 
cooling   it,  but   in   reality  for  the  sole  purpose  of  dis- 
playing the  ring  on  one  of  his  fingers,^  or  if  we  trust 
Juvenal  when  he  points  at  a  glutton  staggering  with  an 

>  Dill,   "  Roman    Society   in    the    Last    Century    of   the    Western 
Empire,"  p.  99. 

'  *'  Ventilat  asstivum  digitis  sudantibus  aurum"  (i.  28). 


ROME  309 

undigested  peacock  to  the  bath,^  why  should  we  dis- 
trust him  when  he  tells  us  that  every  vice  had  reached 
its  climax  in  Rome  ?  ^  He  says  that  in  the  age  of 
Domitian  money  was  the  measure  of  all  things,  and 
that  every  man  had  his  price.^  But  that  was  no  less 
true  of  the  last  days  of  the  Republic  when  Cassar  was 
steadily  buying  the  road  to  power,  and  buying  it,  too, 
with  other  people's  money  and  with  the  plunder  of 
Gaul.  When,  again,  Juvenal  asks  what  chance  he  can 
have  at  Rome  since  he  does  not  know  how  to  lie,^  he 
is  using  almost  the  same  language  as  Martial,  who  warns 
"a  good  poor  man"  never  to  set  foot  in  a  city^  which 
was  alive  only  as  corruption  is  alive.  Juvenal  and 
Martial  were  doubtless  poets  with  chagrins,  and  they 
lived  with  strange  boon  companions  ;  but  at  least  Juvenal 
supplies  precisely  that  element  of  indignation  which  the 
age  needed,  and  he  is  in  the  company  of  Seneca  and  of 
Tacitus.  From  another  quarter  he  receives  corrobora- 
tion in  Petronius.  When  Juvenal  illuminates  for  us 
passionate  Roman  nights,  he  is  busy  with  types  which 
were  not  only  not  abnormal,  but  had  been  inherited 
from  an  earlier  and  were  about  to  be  bequeathed  to  a 
later  generation.  The  fiery  lines  which  paint  the  period 
of  Tiberius,  Nero,  and  Domitian  would  not,  after  all, 
have  been  out  of  place  in  the  age  of  Caesar,  and  they 
would  have  depicted  even  in  detail  the  age  of  Honorius. 
On  the  one  side  the  satirist  belongs  to  the  school  of 
Cato,  and  on  the  other  to  the  school  of  Ammianus 
Marcellinus  and,  we  may  even  add,  of  Salvianus.  During 
the   six   hundred   and   sixty   years   which   separated   the 

^  Juvenal,  i.  143. 

'  "  Omne  in  prascipiti  vitium  stetit"  (ibid.,  149). 
3  "Omnia  Romae  cum  pretio"  (iii.  183). 
*  "Quid  RomEE  faciam?     Mentiri  nescio"  (iii.  41). 
^  "  Unde  miser  vives  ?  homo  fidus,  certus  amicus. 
Hie  nihil  est"  {Epigratnmata,  iv.  5). 


310  THE   NEMESIS   OF  NATIONS 

censorship  of  Cato  (184  b.c.)  from  the  fall  of  the 
Western  Empire  (a.d.  476)  the  gap  between  Roman 
wealth  and  Roman  poverty  had  become  immense,  and  on 
both  sides  of  the  gap  numerous  social  evils  had  accumu- 
lated. Like  a  fiery  cross  the  spirit  of  Juvenal  appears 
throughout  the  entire  period,  and  in  a  certain  form  it 
reappears  even  in  the  writings  of  the  early  Church. 
The  continuity  of  the  satire  indicates  the  reality  and 
the  continuity  of  the  things  satirised. 

41.  Ammianus  Marcellinus,  who  was  writing  almost 
within  sight  of  the  catastrophe,  expresses  for  us  in  a 
few  sentences  all  that  had  happened  to  the  State  since 
the  day  when  old  Cato  wished  to  pave  the  Forum  with 
sharp- pointed  stones  in  order  to  drive  away  the  saunterers. 
After  a  stern  education  on  Italian  soil,  the  Republic, 
still  rejoicing  in  its  youth, ^  had  fought  its  way  through 
the  world,  and  had  brought  back  trophies  from  every 
field.  But  war  brought  wealth,  and  wealth  brought 
ease,  and  the  State  began  to  exploit  its  own  prestige 
and  was  tempted  to  live  on  its  reputation.^  At  last, 
according  to  Ammianus,  the  great  Romans,  ruined  by 
success  and  a  long  peace,  were  content  to  measure  the 
height  of  their  greatness  by  the  height  of  their  carriages.^ 
But  it  is  too  often  forgotten  that  this  luxury  and  idleness 
of  the  ruling  class  dated  from  the  Republic.  Macrobius, 
who  was  probably  a  contemporary  of  Ammianus,  actu- 
ally tries  to  prove  that  the  manners  of  his  own  age  were 
less  ostentatious  than  the  manners  of  the  age  of  Cassar. 
He  mentions  that  wealthy  republicans  slept  on  ivory 
beds,  that  they  indulged  in  elaborate  pleasures  of  the 
table,  and  that  even  grave  persons  had  caught  the  con- 

^  "  Populus  in  juvenem  erectus  "  (xiv.  6). 
3  "Nomine  solo  aliquoties  vincens"  (ibid.,  xiv.  6). 
3  "Alii  summum  decus  in  carruchis  solito  altioribus  .  .  .  ponentes" 
(xiv.  6,  9). 


ROME  311 

tagion    of   the   extravagance  which  the   new    commerce 
fostered.^     At   a    celebrated    official    banquet    at   which 
C^sar  was  a  guest  the  hors  d^ ceuvres  alone  might  have 
fed  a  multitude.     The  tastes  of  the  gay  world  of  that 
age  have  even  been  described  as  gross.     It  was  a  world 
which  hoped  to  pay  its    debts    by   the  plunder  of  the 
provinces.     Commerce   was   despised,"  and   landowning, 
rhetoric,  and  politics   were   considered  the  only  proper 
occupations  of  a  gentleman.     But  the  land  had  gradually 
been  acquired  by  a  small  powerful  group  of  capitalists, 
and  scarcely  two  thousand  citizens  had  a  fixed  income.^ 
The  Republic  has  been  described  as  having  been  made 
up,  at   its   close,   of  a   few   millionaires   and   a   mass  ot 
beggars.     Agriculture  was  dying  and  free  industry  was 
dead.     The  finances  were  in  confusion,  and  most  of  the 
statesmen  of  the  day  were  in  debt.     Senators,  debarred 
from  trade,  carried  on  usury  in  secret.     The  administra- 
tion of  justice  was  under  suspicion.     A  few  capitalists 
farmed   their   immense    domains   by   slave   labour,   con- 
verted  agricultural   holdings   into   pleasure-grounds,   or 
gratified  a  ridiculous  taste  by  the  construction  of  vast 
and  useless  fish-ponds.^     Freemen  were  being  driven  out 
of  the  country,  and  their  places  were  taken  by  thousands 
of  slaves.     The  birth-rate  among  the  citizens  was  fall- 
ing.    In  short,  all  the  causes  which  helped  to  weaken 
the  Athenian  Republic,  and  would  break  up  the  Roman 
Empire,  were  in  operation  in  Caesar's  Rome,  and  yet  the 
State  staggered  back  to  its  equilibrium. 

42.  But  in  the  new  order  of  things  the  old  disorder 
lay  latent,  because  the  Roman  Empire  was  a  reconstruc- 
tion  without   a  regeneration.      Tacitus  looked  into   its 

1  "Accipite,  et  inter  gravissimas  personas  non  defuisse  luxuriam" 
{Saturnalia,  n.  g).  ... 

»  "  Opificesque  omnes  in  sordida  arte  versantur     {De  Officns,  1.  42). 

'  Ibid.,  ii.  21. 

♦  Varro,  De  Re.  Rust.,  iii.  17,  6. 


312  THE   NEMESIS   OF   NATIONS 

foundations  and  declared  them  to  be  unsound.^  He 
points  out  that  even  in  the  reign  of  Tiberius  the  army 
had  lost  its  ardour,  although  he  skilfully  puts  this 
criticism  into  the  mouth  of  a  foreigner.^  Italy  was 
unproductive  and  poverty-stricken  {imps),  and  the  citi- 
zens had  become  unwarlike  {t7nbelles).  It  was  in  such 
circumstances  that  Roman  society  offered  material  for 
the  satire  of  Juvenal,  Seneca,  and  Petronius.  The  first 
two  fixed  upon  the  vices  of  the  upper  classes,  while 
the  last  made  a  special  study  of  a  new,  dangerous 
type,  the  freedman,  who  had  gained  his  freedom  by 
having  outwitted  his  master.^  Petronius,  like  Juvenal, 
paints  from  the  life,  and  his  Trimalchio  is  the  vivid  im- 
personation of  a  class  whose  existence  had  become  in- 
evitable in  Rome.  It  is  probable  that  the  advent  of  the 
freedmen  helped  to  stimulate  Roman  commerce  and  to 
postpone  its  decay,  but  these  men  were  really  a  new 
social  peril.  They  imitated,  or  rather  they  outrivalled, 
the  extravagance  of  their  former  masters.  After  a 
sumptuous  bath,  Trimalchio,  the  ex-slave,  is  rubbed 
down  with  the  finest  wool  by  his  own  slaves.  To  in- 
dicate the  high  position  which  he  has  now  reached,  he 
wipes  his  hands  on  a  slave's  head,  is  carried  in  a  litter 
by  his  own  lecticarii,  and  has  slaves  as  runners,  and 
slaves  are  yoked  to  his  chariot.  He  possesses  torturers, 
upon  whose  science  he  depends  for  the  proper  adminis- 
tration of  domestic  punishment.  His  wits  have  enabled 
him  to  accumulate  an  immense  property,  and  in  one  of 
his  domains  as  many  as  thirty  male  and  forty  female 
slaves  are  born  to  him  in  a  single  day.  His  threshing- 
floors  are  busy,  and  he  can  load  his  ships  with  all  kinds 
of  freights,  including  slaves.     But  Trimalchio  is  at  least 

^  Annales,  i.  4. 

2  "  Nihil  validum  in  exercitibus  nisi  quod  externum"  (ibid.,  iii.  40). 

2  "  Dominus  in  domo  factus  sum"  {Cena  I'riinalchionis,  76). 


ROME  313 

frank.  He,  a  nouveau  riche^  reproduces  every  detail  of 
the  scheme  with  which  he  was  so  familiar  when  he  was  a 
drudge  in  a  great  Roman  house.  And  in  six  words  he 
gives  us  the  new  ethical  principle  which  the  entire  system 
had  introduced  into  Rome.  "  Nothing  is  wrong,"  says 
Trimalchio,  "  if  it  is  a  master's  order."  ^  That  was  the 
principle  which  had  so  long  defied  Roman  law,  and  it 
contained  half  the  secret  of  Roman  ruin.  In  spite  of 
hostile  legislation,  it  was  still  active  when  the  Empire 
was  nearing  its  end.  And  here  we  come  back  to  Am- 
mianus,  who  depicts  the  same  society  which  drew  the 
arrows  of  Petronius  and  Juvenal.  The  only  difference 
is  that  that  society  is  now  beyond  redemption.  Neither 
has  Christianity  nor  have  its  own  gods  saved  it.  Its 
convivia  longa^  its  gangs  of  slaves,  of  whom  at  least  fifty 
accompany  every  grandee  to  the  baths  ;  ^  its  starved  mob, 
sniffing  from  afar  the  dinners  of  the  rich,^  or  spending 
the  night  in  the  taverns,  or  under  wretched  tents,  or  in 
the  streets  ;  the  friendships  which  are  only  the  friend- 
ships of  the  gaming-table;*  the  immense,  weary  parade 
of  dead  conventions,  at  last  indicate  a  Rome  ready  for 
the  invader.  But  the  old  soldier  adds  a  piquant  touch 
of  his  own.  He  tells  us  that  the  Romans  had  not  only 
ceased  to  be  soldiers  but  had  become  sham  sportsmen. 
They  now  hunt  by  proxy,  and  when  sport  is  dangerous 
their  slaves  take  the  risks. ^ 

43.  But  slaves  and  the  prisoners  of  war  were  com- 
pelled to  face  in  the  amphitheatre  even  greater  and  more 
fatal  risks  for  the  public  amusement  of  the  Romans. 
And  here  again  we  find  that  the  Republic  had  fore- 
stalled the  tastes  of  the  Empire.     Public  games  which 

1  "  Nee  turpe  est  quod  dominus  iubet"  {Cena  Trimalchionis^  75). 

*  Ammianus,  xxviii.  4,  9. 
3  Ibid.,  xxviii.  4,  34. 

*  "  Amicitias  alearias  solae  sociales  sunt"  (ibid.,  xxviii.  4,  21). 
^  "  Alienis  laboribus  venaturi  "  (ibid.,  xxviii.  4,  18). 


314  THE   NEMESIS  OF   NATIONS 

involved  the  slaughter  of  animals  and  of  men  had  long 
been  provided  by  a  succession  of  political  adventurers, 
who  were  determined  to  win  the  goodwill  of  the  mob. 
Gladiatorial  combats  appear  to  have  had  a  Lydian  or 
Etruscan  origin/  but  they  were  introduced  into  Rome 
as  early  as  264  B.C.  During  the  second  last  century  of 
the  Republic  a  single  gladiatorial  show  cost  as  much  as 
j^yooo.  In  65  B.C.  Cassar  exhibited  three  hundred  and 
twenty  pairs  of  gladiators.  In  44  B.C.  he  built  a 
great  amphitheatre,  and  displayed  before  the  admiring 
multitude  wild  beasts  in  silver  cages.  At  a  single 
spectacle  three  hundred  lions  perished.  Whereas  the 
Greeks,  even  when  under  Roman  influence,  refused  to 
countenance  gladiatorial  shows,  the  Roman  taste  in 
such  matters  grew  wilder.  In  the  wooden  theatre 
erected  by  Scaurus  crocodiles  and  hippopotami  were 
made  to  fight  before  thousands  of  spectators.  The 
taste  had  become  so  thoroughly  national  that  in  the 
epitaphs  of  statesmen  it  was  mentioned  to  their  honour 
that  they  had  provided  at  their  own  expense  fireworks 
and  bloody  games.^  For  instance,  in  the  great  epitaph 
which  Augustus  prepared  for  himself  he  reminds  pos- 
terity that  he  had  given  the  people  exhibitions  in  which 
almost  three  thousand  five  hundred  beasts  had  been 
slaughtered.^  The  Romans  found  the  mere  drama  tame, 
and  even  held  it  in  contempt.  One  of  their  dramatists 
complained  that  he  could  not  compete  against  rope- 
dancers.  And  he  stated  that  the  failure  of  one  of  his 
plays  was  explained  by  the  fact  that  during  its  progress 
a  rumour  reached  the  theatre  that  a  gladiatorial  show 
was  about  to  take  place.     The  theatre  was  immediately 

*  Tertullian,  De  Spect.^  5. 

^  "Populo  .  .  .  gladiatores  dedit,  lumina  ludos  .  .  .  solus  fecit" 
{Orelli,  3324  ;  cf.  134,  and  3858). 

'  "  Quibus  (venationibus)  confecta  sunt  bestiarum  circiter  trium 
milium  et  quingenta"  (Lipsius,  De  Amphitheatro,  i.  5). 


ROME  315 

emptied.  The  craze  for  this  wilder  and  more  sensa- 
tional theatrical  bill  increased  rapidly,  and  even  the 
Christian  emperors  were  compelled  to  gratify  it.  They 
assured  the  people  that  the  public  pleasure  in  such 
sports  was  dear  to  the  imperial  heart.^  One  of  the 
reasons  given  for  the  preservation  of  pagan  temples  in 
Christian  Rome  was  that  originally  they  were  centres 
of  the  games  of  the  circus  and  the  combats  of  the 
arena.^  The  effect  of  these  and  similar  exhibitions  on 
the  minds  of  the  people  had,  however,  already  been 
foreseen  by  some  of  the  wiser  statesmen  of  the  Republic. 
One  of  those  apparently  trivial  facts  which  help  to  illu- 
minate national  character  is  that  at  first  all  Roman 
theatres  were  considered  to  be  only  temporary  structures 
and  were  built  of  wood.  In  154  B.C.  the  Senate  voted 
that  a  stone  theatre  which  was  in  course  of  erection 
should  be  pulled  down.  It  was  not  until  55  B.C.  that 
the  first  stone  theatre  was  built,  and  it  was  the  gift  of 
Pompey.  The  change  in  the  spirit  of  the  people  is, 
therefore,  well  indicated  by  such  vast  constructions  as 
the  Colosseum,  whose  immense  blocks,  still  standing, 
were  hewn  and  placed  in  their  present  position  by  great 
gangs  of  slaves.  The  State  had  now  become  the  pur- 
veyor of  public  amusement,  and  the  Roman  people 
were  now  content  to  live  upon  the  largesses  of  their 
rulers.  A  few  facts  taken  at  random  reveal  a  kind  of 
public  madness.  The  jungles  of  Asia  and  of  Africa  were 
ransacked,  and  slaves  hunted  and  captured  wild  beasts, 
of  which  slaves  would  be  the  victims  in  the  arena  at 
Rome.  The  Nile  gave  up  its  monsters,  and  an  ever- 
changing  menagerie  was  presented  on  the  stage.  The 
most  diabolical  ingenuity  was  displayed  in  devising  new 

^  Theodosian  Code,  xv.  7,  3. 

*  "  Nam  ex  nonnuUis  (templis)  vel  ludorum  vel  circensium  vel  agonum 
origo  fuerit,  non  convenit  ea  convelli,  ex  quibus  populo  Romano  prae- 
beatur  priscarum  solemnitas  voluptatem  "  (ibid.,  xvi.  10,  3). 


3i6  THE   NEMESIS   OF  NATIONS 

kinds  of  combat — an  elephant  against  a  rhinoceros,  a 
bear  against  a  buffalo,  a  panther  against  a  tiger,  and  a 
lion  against  a  man.  Sometimes  the  animals  were  tied 
together,  and  in  that  entanglement  both  perished.  It 
seemed  as  if  the  Romans  desired  to  have  under  their 
own  eyes  a  reduced,  but  realistic  picture  of  that  war 
of  species  of  which  nature  is  always  full.  Martial  is 
certainly  not  guilty  of  exaggeration  when  he  tells  us 
that  the  wild  beasts  became  wilder  after  they  had  arrived 
at  Rome.^  It  is  difficult  to  know  whether  these  duels 
or  the  duels  between  human  beings  gave  greater  satis- 
faction to  the  public.  At  any  rate,  the  Romans  were 
not  satisfied  until  they  had  seen  human  blood  on  the 
scented  arena.^  It  was  the  blood  of  prisoners  of  war 
and  of  slaves.  For  while  it  is  true  that,  at  least  during 
the  Empire,  the  names  of  freemen  occur  in  the  lists  of 
gladiators,^  the  vast  majority  of  the  men  condemned  to 
these  ordeals  were  hired  out  for  the  purpose  by  their 
owners.  In  the  ruins  of  Pompeii,  a  town  which  owned 
a  great  gladiatorial  school,  there  were  discovered  the 
charred  skeletons  of  gladiators  with  the  chains  still 
upon  them.  Sometimes  as  many  as  four  or  five  thou- 
sand of  these  men  perished  in  a  year.  An  enormous 
increase  in  the  number  of  the  spectacles  had  taken 
place  during  the  Empire.  Whereas  in  the  time  of  the 
Republic  there  were  sixty-six  fete-days,  in  the  reign  of 
Marcus  Aurelius  the  number  was  one  hundred  and 
thirty-five,  and  in  the  fourth  century  it  was  one  hun- 
dred and  seventy-five.  Sometimes  the  spectacles  lasted 
for  a  hundred  days,  so  that  the  entire  year  was  con- 
sumed.    And  it  was  not  until  a.d.  404 — that  is  to  say, 

1  "  Postquam  inter  nos  est  plus  feritatis  habet."  He  is  here  speaking 
of  a  ti^er  {Epigrafnmata,  vi.  20). 

^  The  sand  of  the  amphitheatre  was  sprinkled  with  perfume  (Petro- 
nius,  34). 

3  Ritschl,  p.  13. 


ROME  317 

within  six  years  of  the  sack  of  Rome — that  the  gladia- 
torial combats  were  abolished.     In  the  words  of  Martial, 
the  gladiator  was  the  "  darling  of  the  age.  "  ^     Each  of 
those  muscular  giants  who,  armed  with  lasso  and  dagger, 
had  destroyed  all  his  opponents  was  received  with  accla- 
mation,  and   his   freedom  was   often   demanded   by  the 
people.     The  audience  tolerated  no  cowardice.     If  any 
of  the  victims  advanced  timidly,  either  towards  the  wild 
beasts   or  towards  the  human  competitor   prepared   for 
him,  he  was  urged  on  by  blows  from  red-hot  iron  rods,^ 
while    the    spectators    shouted,   "Adhibete!   adhibete ! " 
which  we  may  translate,  "Give  it  him  !  give    it  him  !" 
The  men  who  were  compelled  to  provide  this  frightful 
amusement   for   the    Roman    people   were    drawn    from 
every  country  in  which  Roman  arms  had  won  victory. 
During  the  Republic  stubborn  Samnites,  Gauls,  Thra- 
cians,   and    Carthaginians    had    appeared    in    the    arena. 
But   under    the   Empire    every   new  batch   of   prisoners 
of  war  furnished  new  gladiators,  and  all  nationalities  had 
representatives  in  the  amphitheatrical  duels.    The  throne 
identified   itself  with    the   taste   of   the  multitude,   and 
Commodus  took  apartments  in  the  School  of  the  Gladi- 
ators.    Perhaps,   however,   it  was  later   that   the  public 
fury  reached  its  real  climax.     Even   gladiatorial   shows 
must    have    appeared   tame    compared   with    the   public 
vengeance   which,  in  the    reign    of  Nero,  was  wreaked 
upon  Christians  falsely  accused  of  the  burning  of  Rome. 
Hundreds    of   them    were    sent    into    the    arena    to    be 
crucified,  and    then    to    be    torn    piecemeal    from    their 
crosses  by  the  teeth  of  wild  beasts ;  or  they  were  dressed 
in    inflammable    clothes   which    suddenly    exploded ;    or 
made  to  play  parts  in  scenes  of  extraordinary  debauch, 
borrowed   from   the    mythologies ;    or   they  were  tossed 

^  "  Sasculi  voluptas  "  {Epigrammata,  v.  24). 
^  Friedlander,  vi.  134. 


31 8  THE   NEMESIS   OF   NATIONS 

naked  on  the  horns  of  bulls,  while  the  Emperor  looked  on 
through  his  emerald  eyeglass ;  or,  finally,  if  reserved  for 
the  evening's  entertainment,  they  were  covered  with  pitch 
and  fixed  to  poles  and  then  set  on  fire,  in  order  that  they 
might  thus  illuminate  the  chariot  races. 

44.  If  we  now  ask  which  form  of  this  fearful  abuse 
of  power  was  mainly  responsible  for  the  decay  of  the 
Roman  State  we  are  presented  with  a  problem  which, 
at  this  time  of  day,  is  almost  too  complex  for  solution. 
Any  attempt  to  answer  that  question  by  means  of  a 
single  generalisation  may  be  dismissed  as  unworthy  of 
so  vast  a  subject.  We  shall  at  least  find  no  help  in  the 
shallow  sophistry  that  it  was  the  Christian  religion  which, 
when  it  became  the  religion  of  the  emperors,  caused  the 
fall  of  Rome.  If,  indeed,  that  could  be  proved,  let  us 
say  boldly  that  in  spite  of  Rome's  greatness  the  world's 
debt  to  Christianity  would  be  thereby  increased.  For  it 
is  impossible  to  admit  that  a  State  whose  existence  de- 
pended on  such  a  vast  and  insolent  usufruct  of  human 
lives  should  have  continued  to  exist.  Not  even  Chris- 
tianity, however,  was  able  to  arrest  an  inevitable  process, 
and  Rome  was  moribund  long  before  the  Edict  of  Milan. 
The  Church  believed  that  miracles  had  accompanied  the 
first  apparition  of  the  Christian  religion,  and  that  they 
continued  to  attest  the  power  of  the  saints.  But  the 
real  miracle,  which  never  happened,  would  have  been 
the  deliverance  of  Rome  from  the  effects  of  causes  which 
had  already  destroyed  all  other  States.  The  truth  is  not 
that  Christianity,  with  its  new  doctrine  of  passivity,  ruined 
Rome,  but  that  Rome  ruined  Christianity.  In  the  annals 
of  courage  there  is  probably  nothing  more  wonderful  than 
the  fact  that  the  Church,  although  weak  and  helpless,  had 
come  westwards  to  face  the  fearful  panoply  of  Roman 
might.  And  it  will  always  remain  one  of  the  most  im- 
pressive things  in  human  history  that  it  is  in  the  confusion 


ROME  319 

and  the  roar  of  Rome  that  we  seem  to  hear  the  first  faint 
sound  of  the  bells  of  Christ.  But  the  truth  is  not  that 
the  Church  absorbed  the  State,  but  that  the  State  absorbed 
the  Church.  When  the  new  religion  was  caught  in  the 
vortex  of  the  world's  politics  the  divine  mission  of  Jesus, 
like  the  mission  of  Buddha,  became  gradually  entangled 
with  alien  schemes.  The  angry  hostility  of  the  writer  of 
the  Book  of  Revelation  against  Rome  was  changed  into 
the  acquiescence  of  a  man  like  St.  Jerome,  who  deplored 
her  fall.  It  is  no  doubt  startling  that  whereas  Constantine, 
when  he  made  a  State  entry,  used  to  be  preceded  by  a 
procession  of  the  old  pagan  gods,  the  day  came  when  the 
cross  was  carried  before  him.  It  is  even  more  startling 
to  know  that  once  when  certain  Christian  sects  implored 
his  mediation,  he  who  had  been  a  pagan  replied  that  they 
should  not  expect  judgment  from  a  man  who  was  him- 
self to  be  judged  by  Christ.  But  although  the  cross 
became  the  monogram  of  the  Empire,  and  was  engraved 
on  the  shields  of  Roman  soldiers,  there  was  little  funda- 
mental change  in  the  political  and  social  system  of  the 
State.  The  amphitheatrical  combats  were  continued  even 
although  the  Theodosian  Code  admitted  their  cruelty.^ 
The  law  of  the  Christian  Emperor  Constantine  which 
permitted  a  master  to  amputate  the  feet  of  a  fugitive 
slave  was  incorporated  more  than  two  hundred  years  later 
in  the  code  of  the  Christian  Emperor  Justinian.  In 
spite  of  some  ameliorations  in  the  servile  condition,  it  was 
impossible  for  Christianity  to  shake  the  accumulated 
authority  of  centuries  of  privilege.  Nay,  Christians 
themselves  owned  slaves,  and  St.  Chrysostom  denounced 
Christian  ladies  for  cruelty.  On  the  authority  of  writers 
like  Salvianus  and  Jerome,  Christian  society  reproduced 
even  in  detail  that  mode  of  life  which  the  first  generation 

^  "  Cruenta  spectacula  in  otio  civili  et  domestica  quiete  non  placent " 
(xv.  12,  i). 


320  THE   NEMESIS   OF   NATIONS 

of  Christians  had  condemned.  To  suppose  that  because 
Christianity  became  the  official  religion  of  Rome  any 
deep  or  immediate  change  occurred  in  the  national  life, 
is  to  suppose  that  because  Christianity  is  likewise  the 
official  religion  of  modern  European  States  no  modern 
war  is  possible,  and  that  within  every  State  all  men  are 
brothers.  We  find,  on  the  contrary,  that  the  "  Prince 
of  this  World,"  as  Christ  called  him,  was  early  busy 
among  the  successors  of  the  fishermen  of  Galilee,  and 
that  his  victories  were  easy.  Whereas  the  Christians  of 
the  first  century  had  refused  to  enter  the  amphitheatre, 
those  of  the  second  displayed  such  a  passion  for  it  that 
Tertullian  wrote  a  pamphlet  to  warn  them  of  their  guilt. ^ 
In  the  fifth  century  Salvianus  admitted  that  when  a  f6te 
of  the  Church  clashed  with  a  show  at  the  circus  the 
Christians  would  be  found  in  the  circus.  And  he  asks 
them  to  say  honestly  whether  they  are  not  conscious  of  a 
desire  to  hear  the  words  of  the  actor  rather  than  the 
words  of  Christ.-  This  absorption  of  the  new  Christian 
spirit  in  the  older  spirit  of  Roman  custom  and  tradition 
was  already  na'fvely  foreshadowed  by  Tertullian.  For  in 
reply  to  the  charge  that  the  Christians  were  a  barren  and 
unprofitable  sect  he  pointed  out  that,  on  the  contrary, 
they  engaged  in  business  like  ordinary  citizens  and  were 
to  be  found  wherever  Romans  were  to  be  found — in  the 
market-place,  in  the  Forum,  in  the  taverns,  and  at  the 
baths.^  Now,  this  contact  between  the  Church  and  the 
world  had  already  borne  its  fruit  before  the  age  of 
Jerome.  If  he  and  Salvianus  are  suspected  of  exaggera- 
tion when  they  depict  the  pagan   manners  of  the  times, 

^  "Animadverte,Christiane,quotnuminaimmundapossederintcircum. 
Aliena  est  tibi  religio  quam  tot  diaboli  spiritus  occupaverunt  "  {De 
Sped.,  8). 

*  "Verba  vitae  an  verba  mortis,  verba  Christi  an  verba  mimi"  i^De 
Gubernatione  Dei,  vii.  7,  37  ;  cf,  vi.  4,  20). 

^  Apol.^  vi.  42. 


ROME  321 

they  at  least  deserve  trust  when  they  are  painting  the 
manners  of  the  Christians,  since  in  this  case  they  must 
have  been  tempted  rather  to  conceal  the  truth.  Both, 
however,  write  in  a  style  which  proves  that  the  Gospel 
had  failed  to  subdue  the  spirit  of  the  age.  The  con- 
tagion had  reached  even  the  leaders  of  the  Church,  who, 
if  they  endured  long  fasts,  enjoyed  also  long  banquets.-^ 
Jerome  confesses  that  he  is  ashamed  to  admit  how  many 
of  the  Church's  children  the  world  had  already  stolen.^ 
In  an  epigram  ^  which  appears  to  have  been  a  parody  of 
a  passage  of  St.  Paul  the  Christians  excused  their  worst 
lapses,  and  frequently  diverted  attention  from  their  adven- 
tures by  sallies  of  blasphemous  wit.  The  luxury  of  the 
women,  their  elaborate  toilets,  their  mantles  of  the  colour 
of  hyacinth,*  and  their  troops  of  lovers  made  it  difficult  to 
distinguish  them  from  the  pagan  society  in  which  they 
moved.  The  spirit  of  nonconformity  thus  appears  to 
have  lost  its  vigour  very  early.  There  is  a  passage  in 
the  Theodosian  Code  which  indicates  in  even  a  more 
striking  way  this  fusion  between  modes  of  life  and 
thought  which  had  been  at  first  in  violent  antagonism, 
for  it  appears  that  Christians  had  actually  been  appointed 
as  custodians  of  the  pagan  temples.^  These  and  many 
similar  facts,  therefore,  would  be  sufficient  to  prove  that 
if  the  Christian  religion  contributed  to  the  fall  of  Rome, 
the  reason  cannot  have  been  that  its  later  spirit  was 
incapable  of  combining  with  the  spirit  of  the  old  civilisa- 
tion which  it  encountered.  And  the  other  charge,  that 
the    loss    of  national   energy  was  due   precisely  to  this 

^  Jerome,  Ep.  xxii.  13. 

*  "  Pudet  dicere  quot  quotidie  Virgines  ruant,  quantas  de  suo  gremio 
mater  perdat  Ecclesia"  (ibid.,  xxii.  13). 

*  "  Omnia  munda  mundis." 

*  "  Hyacinthina  laena." 

*  "  Quisquis  seu  iudex  seu  apparitor  ad  custodiam  templorum  homines 
Christianae  religionis  adposuerit  sciat  non  saluti  suae  non  fortunis  esse 
parcendum"  (Theod.  Code,  xvi.  i,  i). 


322  THE   NEMESIS   OF   NATIONS 

combination  of  Christianity  and  the  State  and  to  the 
destruction  of  faith  in  the  old  national  gods,  finds 
its  refutation  in  Tertullian,  who  points  out  that  the 
faith  in  the  national  gods  was  already  thoroughly 
decayed.^ 

45.  But  the  new  religion  as  represented  by  its  greatest 
men,  such  as  Tertullian  or  Jerome,  was  undoubtedly  a 
regenerating  influence  in  the  State.  It  must  have  been  a 
perception  of  the  social  sterility  and  stagnation  of  the 
Roman  system  which  caused  Tertullian,  who  was  a  bril- 
liant jurist,  to  abandon  a  lucrative  practice  at  the  Bar  for 
the  study  and  practice  of  the  Gospel.  He  was  familiar 
with  the  entire  organisation  of  Roman  law,  and  knew  that 
its  crushing  weight  was  felt  most  severely  in  the  lowest 
social  strata.  It  must  have  been  a  conviction  of  the  failure 
of  Roman  civilisation  which  compelled  him  to  accept  the 
new  revolution  expressed  in  the  new  religion.  It  is  true 
that  Christians  kept  slaves,  and  that  Christian  writers 
sometimes  spoke  with  the  old  contempt  for  the  entire 
servile  class."  But  they  were  aware  that  the  slaves  only 
imitated  their  masters.^  Indeed,  it  is  among  the  Chris- 
tian writers  that  we  discover  the  only  genuine  perception 
of  the  social  problems  of  the  day.  Their  earnestness  is 
in  the  strongest  contrast  with  the  lethargy  of  the  leaders 
of  Roman  society.  If,  for  instance,  we  compare  Jerome 
with  Symmachus  we  shall  find  that  the  kind  of  energy 
which  might  have  saved  the  State  belongs  not  to  the  pagan 
but  to  the  Christian.  Symmachus,  although  he  was  a 
senator  and  had  been  prastor,  quaestor,  proconsul,  and 
consul,  is  blind  to  the  signs  of  the  times.  He  is  content 
to  remark  that  the  age  in  which  he  is  privileged  to  live 

^  "Ubi  religio,  ubi  veneratio  majoribus  debita  a  vobis?"  {Apol.,  vi.) 
*  "Cave  nutrices  et  gerulas"  (Jerome,  Ep.  liv.  5) ;  "nequitiam  servu- 

lorum  "  (liv.  6). 

'  See  the  elaborate  defence  of  the  slaves  in  Salvianus  {De  Guber- 

natione  Dei,  iv.). 


ROME  323 

is  "  a  friend  to  virtue."  ^  He  is  more  capable  of  giving 
an  opinion  on  the  proper  site  of  the  statue  of  Victory 
than  of  bringing  victory  to  the  State.  Although  almost 
within  view  of  the  catastrophe,  he  is  busy  arranging  gladia- 
torial shows  and  combats  of  wild  beasts,  in  order  to  mark 
most  fittingly  the  entrance  of  his  son  into  public  life. 
When  the  news  comes  that  slaves  are  to  be  enrolled  in 
the  army,  he  is  more  troubled  by  the  fact  that  rich  men 
will  thus  be  deprived  of  their  servants  than  by  the  disas- 
trous condition  of  the  army.  Not  many  years  before  the 
sack  of  Rome  he  urges  his  friends  to  send  him  from  every 
quarter  of  the  globe  the  kind  of  menagerie  which  most 
impressed  the  Roman  people.  And  when  the  great  spec- 
tacle is  in  progress  he  urges  his  relatives  to  hasten  to 
Rome,  because  two  of  the  crocodiles  are  still  breathing 
and  he  cannot  guarantee  that  they  will  survive  much 
longer.^  But  the  man's  real  character  is  perhaps  best 
seen  in  his  burst  of  indignation  at  the  fact  that  the  brave 
Saxons,  whom  he  had  reserved  as  gladiators,  had  agreed 
to  strangle  each  other  rather  than  appear  before  the  Roman 
people.  In  his  misfortune  the  statesman  consoles  him- 
self with  the  reflection  that,  according  to  Socrates,  it  is 
all  one  to  a  good  man  whether  his  best  laid  schemes  suc- 
ceed or  fail,^  If  Symmachus  is  to  be  taken  as  a  typical 
statesman  of  his  age,  could  Rome  have  been  saved  by 
futile  creatures  like  these  .?  When  we  turn  to  Jerome 
we  find  an  utterly  new  temperament.  Symmachus  could 
never  have  written  the  sympathetic  letter  to  a  Roman 
soldier  in  which  Jerome  reminds  a  brave  man  that  a  good 
and  great  heart  may  be  found  under  a  military  cloak.*  In 
his  concern  for  the  strength  of  the  Roman  army,  Jerome, 

1  Ep.  iii.  43. 

^  "  Duos  (crocodillos)  etiam  nunc  spirantes  in  vestrum  differemus 
adventum,  licet  eos  cibi  abstentia  longum  vivere  posse  non  spondeat" 
(Ep.  vi.  43). 

3  II.  46.  *  Ep.  cxlv. 


324  THE   NEMESIS   OF   NATIONS 

indeed,  betrays  a  somewhat  charming  inconsistency.     He 
is  a  practical  man  struggling  to  adjust  the  needs  of  the 
age  with  the  ideals  of  his  creed.     He  is  not  content  to 
point   out  that   Roman  vices  have   made  the  barbarians 
strong,    but    declares     that    national    sins    have    under- 
mined the  vigour  of  the  Roman  army.^     He  who  lived 
to  see  the   fulfilment   of  the  prophecy  of  the  Book  of 
Revelation  concerning    Rome    is    still    anxious  that    the 
city  should   present  the  boldest  front.     His  excitement 
increased  when   he  began   to  understand   that  she  must 
no  longer  fight  for  glory  but  for  safety.^     And  when  at 
last  Alaric  is  at  the  gates  Jerome  is  indignant  that  the 
city  is  to  be  saved  not  with  the  help  of  the  sword  but  by 
means  of  an  indemnity.^    Patriotism  could  hardly  be  more 
forcibly  expressed  than  in   his  question.  What  is  safe  if 
Rome  perishes }  *     This  no  doubt  was  also  the  kind  of 
spirit  which   animated   a  great   man   like  Stilicho,  but  it 
had  become  rare   in  Rome.      And  the  Romans,  like  the 
Athenians,  got  rid   of  their  great  man  two  years  before 
the  date  when  they  most  needed  him.^     As  if  to  illus- 
trate the  saying   of  an  early  Roman   poet   that   fortune 
makes   men   stupid  when   she  wishes   to  destroy  them,  a 
paralysis  had   overtaken   the  ruling    class.      In   the   case 
of  Rome,   as  in   the   case   of  Babylon,   the  moment    of 
crisis  was  the   moment  when  the  weakest  man  was  on 
the  throne,  and  once  again  the  combination  of  inner  and 
of  outer  causes  of  ruin  was  complete.     Jerome  wonders 
why   calamity   visited    a   State    whose    rulers    were    now 
Christians.^     But  if  rulers  happen  to  be  Christians  and 
imbeciles  .?     When   Rome  was  sacked   her  emperor   was 
at  Ravenna  feeding  his  poultry.     He  was  told  by  one  of 

1  "  Nostris  vitiis  Romanus  superatur  exercitus"  (Ix.  17). 

2  "Quishoc  credet?  .  .  .  Romam  in  gremio  suo  non  pro  gloria,  sed 
pro  salute  pugnare?"  (cxxiii.  17). 

3  Ep.  cxxvii.  12.  ■*  Ep.  cxxni.  17. 
*  Stilicho  was  beheaded  a.d.  408.  •  Ep.  cxxiii.  17. 


ROME  325 

his  servants  that  Rome  had  been  seized.  "  Impossible," 
said  Honorius ;  "  she  has  just  been  feeding  out  of  my 
own  hands."  For  he  had  a  favourite  hen  called  "  Rome," 
and  she  had  the  chief  place  in  his  thoughts.'^ 

46.  In  the  effort  to  discover  the  reasons  for  the  disap- 
pearance of  Rome  as  a  World  State  it  has  been  often 
supposed  that  she  suffered  from  maladies  peculiar  to 
herself.  Since,  however,  a  similar  process  of  develop- 
ment and  of  decay  had  been  already  consummated  by 
the  States  which  had  preceded  her  in  the  sovereignty  of 
the  world,  it  seems  more  reasonable  to  believe  that  funda- 
mental causes  at  work  in  all  of  them  must  account  for 
this  repetition  of  history.  Some  writers  have  discovered 
grave  defects  in  the  inner  organisation  of  the  Empire, 
and  in  a  system  which  involved  the  utter  isolation  of  the 
throne.  There  was  no  genuine  interaction  among  the 
component  parts  of  the  social  organism — or,  rather,  the 
State  was  no  genuine  organism  at  all.  Opposition  was 
carried  on  not  by  constitutional  means  but  by  intrigue. 
Public  opinion  did  not  exist,  or  it  manifested  itself  only 
irregularly  in  the  humours  of  the  amphitheatre.  Within 
three  and  a  half  centuries  thirty-one  out  of  forty-nine 
emperors  were  assassinated.  But  this  dangerous  deadlock 
in  the  political  system  was  not  peculiar  to  Rome,  and  it 
would  be  easy  to  find  an  analogous  situation  in  the 
history  of  other  States.  Babylon  suffered  similar  oscil- 
lations in  the  governing  power,  and  her  dynasties  rose 
and  fell.  In  fact,  the  same  political  and  social  pheno- 
mena persistently  appear  like  recurring  decimals  in  all 
ancient  nations ;  but  it  is  in  their  social  system  that 
the  most  organic  factors  in  their  evolution  and  their 
dissolution  are  to  be  found.  The  economic  basis  of  all 
of  them  was  the  same,  and  that  basis  was  the  slave-market. 
If  we  might  venture  to  generalise  on  so  complex  a  subject, 

^  Procopius,  Di  Bello  Vandalico,  \.  2. 


326  THE   NEMESIS   OF   NATIONS 

we  should  say  that  if  slaves  formed  the  Wealth  of  Nations 
they   formed    also   the   Nemesis.      And    just   as   in   the 
modern  world  the  fortunes  of  a  community  depend  on 
the   adjustment   of  capital  and  labour,  in  antiquity  the 
economic    situation    was    profoundly   influenced    by   the 
adjustment  of  capital  and  slavery.      So  far  as   its   own 
interests  were  concerned,  labour  in  antiquity  was  wholly 
passive.     Given  a  great  and  continuous  supply  of  slaves, 
the   capitalist   carried   on    his   work   uncontrolled.     The 
slaves  were  his  automata,  and,  indeed,  they  constituted 
the  machinery  of  the  ancient  world.     There  may  never 
be  a  genuine  equation  between  capital  and  labour,  but  in 
antiquity  there  was  not  even  the  pretence  of  such  a  thing. 
Power  was  wholly  on  the  one  side,  and  the  result  was  a 
dreadful  sense  of  strain  in  the  industries  and  the  com- 
merce of  the  State.     It  would,  of  course,  be  useless  to 
pretend  to  lay  bare  every  step  in  that  silent  and  prolonged 
collusion  of  destructive  forces  which  undermined  those 
nations,  or  to  attempt  to  calculate  the  amount  of  damage 
attributable  to  each  single  cause.     The  causes  were  not 
single  at  all,  but  intricately  entangled.      When  we   re- 
member that  to  the  activity  of  impersonal  and  economic 
factors  we  must  add  the  conscious  interference  of  strong 
and  of  weak  statesmen  in  the  afl^airs  of  States,  we  see  that 
we  are  face  to  face  with  a  problem  of  remarkable  com- 
plexity.    In  the  long  cycle  which  separates  the  organisa- 
tion from   the  disorganisation  of  the  State  the  character 
of  the  people  undergoes  innumerable  changes.       In   the 
evolution  of  a  State,  as  of  a  star,  chaos  precedes  cosmos. 
But  when  cosmos  comes  the  chaotic  elements  are  often 
only  put  to  sleep,  and  it  appears  to  be  the  decree  of  destiny 
that  they   must  again  awake.      We   have   seen   in   these 
imperfect   sketches   that  communities  started   their  cor- 
porate life  with  a  great  store  of  energy,  which  expressed 
itself  in  a  vital  religion,  a  vital  agriculture,  a  vital  art, 


/ 


ROME  327 

and,  above  all,  in  a  vital  military  activity  which  resulted 
in  a  wide  extension  of  the  primitive  area.     The  military 
activity  was  the  dominant  factor  in  fixing  the  amount  of 
the  expansion,  in  guarding  the  new  boundaries,  and  in 
diverting,  by  compulsion,  the  commerce  of  surrounding 
States    towards   a    new   centre.       Meanwhile,   as   wealth 
flowed  in,  a  struggle   for   its   equal    distribution   began 
within  the  State's  own  borders,  and  it  became  articulate 
in  frequent  and  violent  oscillations  of  the  body  politic. 
The   national    self-consciousness   was    now   permanently 
divided,   or  it  was   united   only  in   face   of  an   invader. 
Sometimes,  as  in  the  case  of  Babylon,  Greece,  and  Rome, 
when  the  enemy's  rule  offered  advantages  new  groupings 
and   secessions   took   place.     Within  the  State   itself  no 
amount   of  political   change   gave   genuine  peace.     The 
community  had  become  lop-sided  ;  power  and   property 
had  fallen  into  the  hands  of  the  more  energetic  citizens, 
while  hunger  and  misery  became  the  hereditary  burden 
of  the  masses.     But  both  of  those  opposed  factors  pro- 
duced the  same  result,  for  luxury  undermined  the  virility 
of  the  rich,  and  poverty  undermined  the  strength  and 
character  of  the  poor,  and  slavery  broke  the  spirit  of  the 
working  class.      In  its  collective  capacity  the  State  had 
been  living  on  its  potential  energy,  which  became  gradually 
exhausted   because  it  was   unrenewed.     After  the   great 
process  of  addition  of  national  wealth  and  power  came 
the  process  of  subtraction.     The  wealth  that  had  poured 
in  began  to  pour  out  in  the  purchase  of  superfluities,  and 
native   industry  became   unproductive.      Although   now 
and  again  a  successful  war  was  waged,  the  national  move- 
ment was,  on  the  whole,  from  activity  to  passivity.     The 
greatest  amount  of  force  was  congregated  at  the  centre, 
and  the  circumference  was  neglected.    The  accumulating 
energy  of  new  nations  needing  room  went  on  unobserved. 
The    vigilance    at    the    frontiers    was    relaxed.      Within 


32  8  THE   NEMESIS   OF  NATIONS 

twenty  years  Jerome  witnessed  a.  momentous  shrinkage 
in  the  diameter  of  the  Roman  world,  and  section  after 
section  of  the  great  circle  was  seized.  Or,  if  we  might 
be  allowed  to  vary  the  image,  we  should  say  that  there 
comes  a  day  when  the  State  finds  itself  moving  on  an  in- 
clined plane.  Sometimes,  as  in  the  case  of  Greece,  the 
descent  was  rapid  and  violent.  Sometimes,  as  in  the 
cases  of  Babylon  and  Rome,  it  was  prolonged,  and  many 
centuries  heard  the  rumblings  of  their  dilapidation.  It 
is  extremely  remarkable  that  almost  every  State  appears 
to  record  unconsciously  these  symptoms  of  its  own  de- 
cline, as,  for  instance,  in  inferior  and  stagnant  art  and 
literature,  and  above  all  in  the  loss  of  its  religion.  There 
is  no  doubt  some  danger  in  the  attempt  to  identify  the 
life  of  the  State  with  the  life  of  the  individual,  but  the 
analogy  is  often  striking.  History  has  her  own  chapter 
of  pathology,  which  allows  us  to  see  that  the  State,  like 
the  individual,  suffers  many  fluctuations  of  health  and 
disease  between  the  two  extremes  of  helplessness — child- 
hood and  old  age. 

47,  In  the  long  catalogue  of  subversive  causes  it  is 
important  to  note  the  decay  of  political  instinct  which 
betrayed  itself  after  the  Roman  Empire  had  been  con- 
solidated. During  the  reign  of  Tiberius  the  right 
of  appointing  magistrates  was  transferred  from  the 
people  to  the  Senate.  In  other  words,  the  entire  poli- 
tical effort  of  the  Republic  was  rendered  void.  And 
when  in  the  reign  of  Caligula  the  right  of  appointment 
was  give  back  to  the  citizens  they  refused  to  exercise 
their  privilege,  so  that  once  more  it  passed  to  the  Senate. 
On  the  other  hand,  it  would  be  wrong  to  suppose  that 
mere  political  development  can  save  a  State.  In  Athens 
and  in  Rome  political  activity  was  often  utterly  barren, 
and  one  of  the  lessons  of  history  is  that  great  social 
abuses    go    on    accumulating    while    men    talk    politics. 


ROME  329 

Moreover,  in  Greece  and  in  Rome  class  privileges  had 
actually  a  political  origin,  and  many  families  dated  their 
greatness  from  the  day  when  some  ancestor  had  been 
strategos  or  prastor  or  consul,  or  even  tribune.  An 
aristocracy  sleeps  in  every  democracy.  And  it  is  one 
of  the  ironies  of  history  that  the  people  begin  to  look 
with  suspicion  on  the  men  whom  they  have  uplifted, 
because  in  a  servant  they  begin  to  find  a  ruler.  Thus 
the  acts  of  one  prominent  character  who  owes  his  posi- 
tion to  election  may  alter  the  whole  destiny  of  a  people 
and  set  the  collective  will  at  naught.  Or,  again,  we  may 
notice  the  growing  hazards  of  a  State  in  the  creation 
of  an  opulent  society  in  which  military  ardour  gradually 
declines.  Whereas  in  early  Rome  the  burghers  formed 
the  battalions,  during  the  Empire  the  army  was  re- 
organised on  a  mercenary  basis  and  was  separated  from 
the  people.  Owing  to  the  jealousy  of  the  throne, 
senators  were  forbidden  to  be  soldiers.  And  the  Em- 
peror Constantine  carried  to  its  logical  conclusion  the 
military  policy  of  Augustus  and  caused  the  bodies  of 
the  soldiers  to  be  branded  like  slaves  as  a  sign  that 
they  were  imperial  property.  But  here  again  we  see 
that  a  fighting  force,  however  efficient,  if  it  be  detached 
from  the  nation  is  no  proper  bulwark.  The  victories 
of  Stilicho  and  of  Aetius,  although  brilliant,  did  not 
save  a  people  who  were  content  to  fight  by  proxy 
and  had  begun  to  mutilate  themselves  in  order  to 
escape  military  service.  Further,  as  a  disintegrating 
influence  we  should  observe  the  tendency  of  property, 
and  especially  of  property  in  land,  to  become  vested 
in  a  few  families ;  and  here  we  may  repeat  the  bold 
generalisation  of  Pliny  that  the  great  estates  {latifundia) 
were  the  cause  of  the  ruin  of  Italy  and  the  provinces. 
In  contrast  with  all  other  things,  wealth  gravitates  up- 
wards.    We  can  hardly  measure  the  amount  of  suffering 


330  THE   NEMESIS   OF   NATIONS 

endured   by  the   ancient    free    poor,   but   it   must   havi 
been  great  before  it  drove  them  into  the  ranks  of  the 
slaves.     In  a  financial  situation  which  was  always  pre- 
carious  and    confused   even  the  rich  incurred   immense 
risks,   for   we    hear    that    during    the    Empire   taxadon 
was    enforced    by    torture.      Again,    as    a    sign    of  the 
national  stagnation  we  may  note  that  there  was  a  return 
to  the  Asiatic  system  of  hereditary  trades  and  profes- 
sions.    A  man's  son  was  compelled  to  follow  his  father's 
profession,  and  he  was   forbidden   to   marry  outside  of 
his  guild,  so  that  we  find  in  Rome  a  survival  of  part  of 
the  social  scheme  portrayed  in  the  Laws  of  Manu.     Amid 
such  sterilising  tendencies  Italy  ceased  to  be  productive, 
and   depended    for   her   food  supply  on  the  labour  of 
thousands  of  slaves  in  the  harvest  fields  of  Africa  and 
Sicily.     And  in  the  city  a  worthless  population  waited 
like  beggars  on  the  imperial  alms  in  the  form  of  wheat, 
pork,  oil,  and  wine.     Like  Athens,  Rome  had  become 
the  parasite  of  her  subject  peoples.     Like  Athens,  too, 
she   suffered    from    a    deficit   in    men.     The    birth-rate 
steadily    declined    both    during    the    Republic    and    the 
Empire.     Lastly,  and  worst  of  all,   she  lost  the  art  in 
which  she  had  excelled — the  great  art   of  government. 
A   strange  decay  of  the  faculty  of  administration  had 
occurred  since  Virgil  wrote  that  it  was  Rome's  mission 
to   spare    the    vanquished    and    to    humble    the    proud. 
The  vanquished   had  not  been  spared.      The  provinces 
were  milked  to  death.     Rome  had  accepted  the  fascinat- 
ing and  perilous  gift   of  imperialism,  but  she  had  not 
fulfilled   all   its    obligations.     She   built  roads,    bridges, 
and  aqueducts  throughout  her  provinces,  but  it  was  by 
the  unpaid  labour  of  provincial  slaves.     Each  city  and 
each   village    mimicked   her,    and   reproduced    even    her 
amphitheatres,  so  that  she   extended  the  good  and  the 
evil  of  her  system  throughout  the  world.     The  exactions 


ROME  331 

of  the  provincial  tax-gatherers  grew  more  intolerable. 
Although  it  is  true  that,  long  dazzled  by  her  prestige, 
the  provinces  clung  to  her  till  she  fell,  and  even 
attacked  her  enemies,  it  is  also  true  that  they  had 
ceased  to  trust  her.  In  the  fifth  century  they  ex- 
pected and  they  received  from  Goths  and  Huns  more 
justice  than  Rome  could  give  them.  Roman  citizen- 
ship, which  used  to  be  so  great  a  prize,  began  to  be 
repudiated  ;  men  feared  to  come  under  the  tyranny  of 
Roman  governors,  and  no  longer  desired  to  be  called 
by  the  Roman  name.^  A  Roman  subject  in  the  camp 
of  Attila  told  a  Roman  envoy  that  he  would  not  now 
exchange  the  government  of  the  Huns  for  the  govern- 
ment of  the  Romans. 

48.  These  were  some  of  the  main  stages  on  the  route 
of  decadence.  States  perish  by  various  forms  of  that 
"excess"  which,  as  some  Greek  thinkers  showed,  is  fatal 
to  prosperous  action.  In  the  foregoing  pages  we  thought 
it  well,  however,  to  concentrate  our  attention  on  that 
excess  of  power  which  those  States  displayed  towards 
the  class  who  created  their  wealth.  A  wholly  hostile 
relation  subsisted  between  capital  and  labour,  and  this 
permanent  deadlock  involved  economic  sterility.  There 
was  an  utter  absence  of  that  co-operation  without  which 
a  State  remains  an  artificial  and  highly  dangerous  or- 
ganism. A  ferocious  individualism,  sometimes  disguised 
as  collectivism,  did  not  scruple  to  dispose  of  human 
life  with  a  recklessness  which  was  in  strange  contrast 
with  the  care  bestowed  on  inanimate  property.  Whereas 
a  vast  immobile  population  were  kept  continually  at  work 
in  order  to  supply  national  necessities,  the  State's  own 
freemen  were  the  unemployed.  And  when  we  remember 
that  in  every  State  the  conditions  were  the  same,  and 
that   wars   were  waged   for  the   purpose   of  maintaining 

^  Salvianus,  v.  5.  21. 


332  THE   NEMESIS   OF   NATIONS 

those  conditions,  the  history  of  antiquity  appears  to  be 
the  history  of  centuries  of  stagnation  and  waste.  Behind 
the  glittering  front  of  ancient  civilisation  we  discover  a 
dark  organisation  of  social  life,  in  which  duties  were 
unaccompanied  by  rights.  Babylon,  Egypt,  Phoenicia, 
Greece,  and  Rome  grew  great  by  means  of  industrial 
systems  which  created  wealth  but  involved  the  ruin  of 
the  workmen.  What  is  the  use  of  knowing  that  the 
Athenian  fleet  defeated  the  Persians  if  we  do  not  know 
that  without  the  incessant  labour  of  the  slaves  in  the 
Athenian  silver  mines  there  would  have  been  no  Athenian 
fleet  at  all .?  Accurate  lists  of  kings,  archons,  and 
strategoi,  consuls,  proconsuls,  and  tribunes,  will  never 
enable  us  to  see  the  unrest  of  those  vanished  States. 
Even  their  art,  their  literature,  and  their  religion  are 
lame  guides,  because  modes  of  thought  and  of  expression 
change  and  beliefs  die.  But  labour  lives.  The  politics 
of  one  era  are  scarcely  intelligible  to  the  next,  but 
it  is  the  continuity  of  human  work  which  binds  ages 
together.  That^  at  least,  is  hereditary  where  all  else 
fluctuates.  When  we  remember  that  the  economic 
systems  of  all  ancient  States  were  organised  upon  the 
same  basis,  and  that  in  the  hope  of  making  that  basis 
permanent  ceaseless  activity  was  kept  up  in  the  gold 
mines  of  Egypt,  in  the  copper  mines  of  Cyprus  and 
Sinai,  in  the  iron,  salt,  and  sulphur  mines  of  Persia,  in 
European  and  Asiatic  tin,  lead,  and  silver  mines,  in 
Caucasian  naphtha  pits  and  ruby  mines  of  Bactria,  in 
the  quarries  of  Numidia  and  Greece,  and  in  the  vast 
brickfields  of  Rome  and  Babylon,  we  are  almost  able  to 
descry  the  dim  masses  of  chained  men  whose  labour  was 
the  creative  force  of  antiquity.  Those  States  appear  to 
have  been  incapable  of  profiting  by  each  other's  social 
and  economic  errors.  Each  of  them  reproduced,  even  in 
detail,   the  same  scheme,    and    they  all    died    bankrupt. 


ROME  333 

After  all,  in  spite  of  the  imposing  fabric  of  Roman  law, 
the  great  imperial  experiment  of  the  West  had  left  the 
mass  of  mankind  in  the  same  social  and  moral  condition 
as  the  great  imperial  experiment  of  the  East.  It  was 
not  merely  a  mystic,  it  was  a  profound  and  doubtless 
a  thoroughly  conscious  political  instinct  which  made  the 
writer  of  the  Book  of  Revelation  identify  the  role  of 
Rome  with  the  role  of  Babylon.  Whether  he  had  or 
had  not  seen  Rome,  he  had  seized  her  great  and  tragic 
meaning  in  the  history  of  the  world.  His  wild  language 
is  the  language  of  contemporary  suffering.  It  is  re- 
markable that  at  the  end  of  the  great  inventory  of  the 
perishing  wealth  of  Rome — gold  and  silver,  pearls  and 
purple,  fine  linen  and  silk  and  ivory,  marble  and  brass, 
horses  and  chariots — the  writer  of  that  astonishing  book 
mentions,  as  the  climax  of  her  riches,  her  slaves.  And  it 
is  even  more  remarkable  that  when  Alaric  at  the  gates 
of  Rome  was  dictating  the  terms  of  capitulation  he 
demanded,  as  an  indispensable  condition,  the  instant  de- 
livery of  those  "  barbarian  slaves  "  {mancipia  barhara)  who 
at  the  moment  were  impatiently  awaiting  his  arrival. 
The  slaves  formed  the  international  elements  in  ancient 
civilisation,  but  wherever  they  went  they  carried  the 
contagion  of  national  sterility.  In  Rome  the  day  of 
amelioration  came  too  late  both  for  economics  and  for 
justice.  Let  it  not  be  said  that  isolated  instances  of 
more  humane  relations  between  employer  and  employed 
really  mitigated  the  effects  of  so  widespread  a  tyranny. 
Let  it  not  be  said  that  the  creation  of  the  Roman  collegia^ 
a  kind  of  trades  clubs  composed  mainly  of  freedmen 
working  to  provide  an  income  for  their  former  lords, 
made  any  fundamental  change  in  an  economic  system 
already  consolidated  by  centuries  of  custom  and  tradi- 
tion. A  master  sometimes  spoke  of  a  slave  as  of  a  son, 
and   reserved   a   place   for  him  in  the  family  sepulchre, 


334  THE   NEMESIS   OF   NATIONS 

and  a  youth  raised  a  monument  to  his  nurse.  These  are 
welcome  facts.  There  were  even  cases  in  which  gladiators 
refused  to  exchange  their  calling.  But  such  facts  are 
insignificant,  because  they  are  not  typical.  The  pressure 
of  the  system  on  nameless  multitudes  is  seen  in  the 
insurrections  which,  although  few  and  in  the  end  abortive, 
sometimes  endangered  the  State.  According  to  Tacitus, 
Rome  suffered  from  perpetual  anxiety  in  case  of  a 
revolution  among  the  slaves.  But  how  feeble  their 
resistance  was  when  it  was  measured  against  the  might 
of  the  Roman  people  is  proved  by  the  six  thousand 
crosses  (and  on  every  cross  a  slave)  which  marked  the 
termination  of  the  revolt  of  the  gladiators.  If  Rome 
was,  on  the  whole,  seldom  troubled  by  that  dangerous 
rolling  of  the  ballast  of  the  State  which  perturbs  the 
modern  world,  the  reason  was  that  her  labouring  popu- 
lation, isolated  and  disorganised,  were  kept  in  chains. 
If  we  study  ancient  nations  from  within,  and  penetrate 
behind  the  mere  foreground  of  their  glory,  we  discover  a 
society  governed  by  intimidation.  If  we  had  a  telescope 
to  bring  them  near  we  should  find  all  of  them  resting  on 
impossible  foundations.  Their  combined  rivalries,  like 
the  rivalries  of  modern  States,  pressed  most  heavily  on 
the  poorest  class,  and  involved  an  immense  but  futile 
activity.  It  was  deeply  significant  that  although  Rome 
raised  a  statue  to  Quiet,  she  placed  it  outside  the  walls. 
We  visit  her  ruins,  but  we  forget  the  buried  indignation 
which  lies  beneath  them.  Not  long  ago  the  Esquiline 
cemetery  was  excavated,  and  there  was  discovered  a  pit 
one  thousand  feet  long  and  three  hundred  feet  deep.  It 
was  an  ancient  burial-ground  for  slaves,  who  were  thrown 
into  it  along  with  the  carcasses  of  animals  and  the  refuse 
of  the  city.  If  it  be  true  that  methods  of  human  burial 
indicate  the  value  which  is  placed  on  human  life,  these 
Roman  slave-pits  are  in  themselves  sufficient  to  indicate 


ROME  335 

the  spirit  that  lay  behind  Roman  civilisation.  The  col- 
lective tyranny  was  reproduced  in  the  acts  of  the  single 
citizen.  His  voracious  egoism  was  expressed  in  the 
boast  of  Roman  capitalists  that  their  own  domains 
and  their  own  slaves  supplied  them  with  almost  every 
article  that  they  needed,  and  made  them  independent 
of  the  fluctuations  of  the  markets.  That  is  the  picture 
of  a  society  breaking  up.  It  is  for  such  reasons  that  if 
the  decline  of  an  empire  is,  as  Gibbon  called  it,  "  the 
most  awful  scene  in  the  history  of  mankind,"  it  is  a  scene 
which  cannot  find  its  ultimate  explanation  in  the  narrow 
formulas  of  politics  and  economics.  For  a  nation  is  a 
collection  of  individuals  whose  actions  contain  elements 
of  surprise,  and  are  incalculable,  and  the  sum  of  their 
characters  is  the  national  conscience.  Hence  the  national 
conscience  may  vary  from  century  to  century.  On  the 
private  tombs  of  the  Romans  there  have  been  discovered 
dedications  to  Nemesis.  But  we  cannot  measure  every 
step  of  that  long  and  insidious  process  of  deterioration  in 
their  private  character  which  at  last  caused  her  name  to 
be  written,  with  deeper  meaning,  on  the  Tomb  of  the 
State. 


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INDEX 


Abraham,  a  Babylonian,  73 
Accadians,  rivals  of  the  Sumerians, 

87 

Acropolis  of  Athens,  tyrant  of  the 
East  lodged  on,  170;  expense 
lavished  on,  176;  statue  by 
Phidias  erected  on,  177 

Adonis,  bridegroom  of  Astarte,  147; 
worshipped  by  the  Israelites  as 
Tammuz,  148  ;  gardens  of,  178 

y^schylus,  alphabet  used  by,  146; 
calls  the  Erinyes  the  recording 
angels,  1 54  ;  the  Euinenides  of, 
^54j  '55  ;  ^t  Marathon  and 
Salamis,  171  ;  quoted,  200 

African  skulls  in  prehistoric  Euro- 
pean graves,  i,  9-12 

Ainu,  language  of  the,  17,  18  note 

Akkad,  or  Agadi,  city  of,  87 

Alba,  urns  discovered  in,  237 

Alexander  the  Great,  his  attempt 
to  rebuild  the  Temple  of  Bel, 
98 ;  fascinated  by  Babylon,  99  ; 
received  with  shouts  of  joy  at 
Babylon,  127  ;  captures  purple 
silk  at  Susa,  146  ;  Thebes  cap- 
tured by,  190 

Amenhotep,  bronze  sword  of, 
found,  135 

Ammianus  Marcellinus,  quoted, 
310 

Animal  remains,  prehistoric,  dis- 
covery in  Europe  of,  9 

Antimenes  of  Rhodes,  insurance  of 
slaves  by,  189 

Antoninus  Pius,  the  legislation  of, 
286,  295 


339 


Apollo,  the  god  of  the  sky,  1491; 
Temple  of,  at  Delphi,  205  ;  wor- 
ship in  Rome  of,  242 ;  marble 
Temple  of,  303 

Aqueducts  at  Rome,  301 

Aristophanes,  ridicules  system  of 
Pericles,  173 

Aristotle,  alphabet  used  by,  146 ; 
quoted,  163,  164,  172,  179,  180- 
182  ;  on  slavery,  185,  187,  189, 
198,  201  ;  on  the  Athenians,  211 

"Aryan,"  application  of  the  word, 
14;  languages  in  Asia,  27-31 

Aryans,  in  Hindustan,  25-27  ; 
enter  India  through  Khyber 
Pass,  31 ;  their  progress  in  agri- 
culture, 34 ;  barter  their  chief 
form  of  trade,  35 ;  primitive 
system  of  medicine  existing 
among,  36  ;  gold  used  by,  36  ; 
social  and  political  features  of, 
36-38 ;  gods  worshipped  by,  38, 
39 ;  astronomical  observations 
of,  40  ;  religious  customs,  42,  43 ; 
origin  of  caste  among,  44 

Asia  Minor,  described  as  a  bridge 
connecting  the  Valley  of  the 
Euphrates  with  the  ^gean  Sea, 

Asiatic    civilisation,    indebtedness 

of  Europe  to,  16-18 
Asiatic    types,  appearance   of,    in 

Europe,  i 
Asoka,    India's    most    enlightened 

ruler,  63 
Assyrian     ruins,     lens    discovered 

among,  75 


340 


INDEX 


Astaite,  idols  of,  137;  symbols  of, 
on  coins,  147  ;  the  worship  of,  148 

Astrology,  explanation  of  its  pre- 
dominance over  astronomy,  80, 
81 

Astronomy,  study  of,  in  Babylon, 
80 

Ate,  the  goddess,  150 

Athena,  the  guardian  of  Athens, 
155;  worshipped  with  Poseidon, 
159;  money  lavished  on,  177; 
legend  regarding,  180 

Athens,  a  brilliant  city  in  the  sixth 
century,  139;  Acropolis  of,  139; 
human  scapegoats  sacrificed  at, 
150;  potters  of,  155  ;  judges  and 
juries  chosen  by  the  people  of, 
156  ;  slaves  outnumbered  citizens 
of,  157;  religion  helps  to  re- 
concile political  divergences  in, 
159;  transformed  into  an  in- 
dustrial State,  160;  social  hier- 
archies of  later,  161,  162  ;  pros- 
perity under  Pisistratus  of,  165  ; 
party  strife  in,  166 ;  fury  of 
Darius  with,  168  ;  struggle  with 
Persians  of,  169-171  ;  effect  of 
victory  on  people  of,  171-174; 
constitution  of,  173  ;  Xenophon's 
remark  on,  174  ;  P>ee  Trade 
at,  175  ;  Pericles'  influence  on, 
175-178  ;  building  after  Persian 
occupation  in,  176,  177  ;  slavery 
in,  178  et  seq. ;  industrial  activity 
of,  185  ;  influence  of  silver  mines 
of  Laurion  on,  195-197  ;  libera- 
tion of  slaves  at,  204  ;  decrease 
of  births  at,  206;  the  govern- 
ment of,  208-210;  greed  of 
people  of,  211  ;  the  collapse  of, 
213,  214 

Atlantic  Ocean,  features  of  the  bed 

of,  3>  4 
Augustus,  slavery  in  the  reign  of, 
280,  281  ;  anecdotes  of,  286,  287  ; 
Forum  of,  298 

Babylon,  the  real  historical  link 
between  Eastern  and  Western 
civilisation,   63 ;    known    to   the 


Iranians  as  Bawri,  64;  influence 
of  the  destruction  of,  in  539  B.C., 
70  ;  the  Brain  of  the  East,  71  ; 
Egyptian  kings  write  their  official 
letters  in  language  of,  72  ;  poly- 
theistic, 74  ;  astronomy  studied 
at,  75  ;  the  Paris  of  the  East,  76  ; 
the  work  of  slaves  in,  76  ;  the 
most  densely  populated  district 
of  the  ancient  world,  T'j  ;  vast 
works  for  distribution  of  water 
in,  79 ;  climatic  conditions  of, 
79 ;  stars  observed  and  wor- 
shipped in,  80;  incantations 
against  disease  at,  82,  83 ;  the 
forces  which  created,  86  ;  first 
place  of  minor  municipal  ex- 
periments in  Western  Asia,  91 ; 
prestige  of,  restored  by  Nebu- 
chadnezzar, 94 ;  nature  of  the 
buildings  of,  95  ;  immense  area 
of  ruins  of,  96  ;  size  of  city 
of,  according  to  Herodotus  and 
Xenophon,  96  ;  hanging  gardens 
of,  97  ;  megalomania  of,  98  ;  vice 
and  fascination  of,  99  ;  commerce 
and  riches  of,  100 ;  sources  of 
information  regarding  slaves  in, 

102  ;  the  terror  inspired  by  the 
army  of,  102 ;  bas-reliefs  de- 
picting   cruelty  of  warriors    of, 

103  ;  slaves  under  stern  discip- 
line at,  106 ;  the  three  great 
classes  of,  107  ;  slaves  branded 
and  hired  out  like  cattle  in,  108  ; 
price  of  slaves  at,  109,  1 10,  1 14  ; 
struggle  between  capital  and 
labour  began  in,  in  ;  disease 
affecting  slaves  in,  114-116; 
suppositions  that  slaves  ownecl 
property  in,  116-118;  effect  of 
Code  of  Hammurabi  on,  119- 
124;  the  causes  of  the  fall  of, 
125-128 

Baths  of  Caracalla,  the,  302 

Berosus,  quoted,  T],  86 

Bologna,  originally  named  Felsina, 

233  ;  iron  swords  found  at,  237 
Brahmanism,  45,  46,  60  ;  prevails 

over  Buddhism  in  India,  63,  64 


INDEX 


341 


Brahmans,  the  Druids  of  India,  43  ; 
loyalty  to,  the  test  of  orthodoxy, 
46 ;  social  laws  relating  to,  50- 
52,  57;  their  gravest  charge 
against  Buddha,  61 

Buddha,  reformation  preached  by, 
rejected  in  India,  59  ;  a  revolu- 
tionary, 60  ;  Brahmans'  gravest 
charge  against,  61  ;  "the  master 
of  compassion,"  61  ;  develop- 
ment of  Buddhism  after  his 
death,  62 

Buddhism,  driven  out  of  India,  59  ; 
a  movement  from  tyranny  and 
luxury  to  liberty  and  co-opera- 
tion, 60 ;  prevailed  over  by 
Brahmanism,  63,  64 

Bushmen  of  Australia,  similarity  of 
their  myths  with  those  of  early 
Greece,  149 

Byblos,  the  oldest  Phoenician  city, 
144 

CyESAR,  Julius,  Europe  in  time 
of,  131  ;  fascinated  by  religion 
of  the  Druids,  242  ;  the  soldiers 
of,  256 ;  the  slaves  of,  269, 
270 ;  Rome  in  time  of,  280 ; 
price  paid  for  site  of  Forum  by, 
298  ;  manners  of  the  age  of,  310, 
311  ;  gladiators  exhibited  by,  314 

Cambyses,  translation  of  contract 
made  by,  114 

Campus  Martius,  the,  238  ;  the 
great  colonnades  of,  303 

Canaan,  influence  of  Babylon  felt 

'";  73 
Capital  and   labour,   struggle   be- 
tween, began  in  Babylon,  1 1 1 
Capitol,  the,  of  Rome,  238 
Capua,  the  home  of  gladiators,  223 
Caracalla,  the  baths  of,  302 
Carthage,  a  commercial  State,  257  ; 
peace    with    Rome    wished    by 
aristocracy  of,  259  ;    the  slaves 
of,  270 
Caspian  Sea,  formation  of,  6 
Caste,  origin  in   India  of,  44  ;  in- 
surmountable barriers  of,  48  ;  in 
Sparta,  161 


Cato,  quoted,  275  ;  his  advice  to 
agriculturists,  290,  291 

Celts,  in  Italy,  232,  233 

Chaldita,  the  source  of  Egyptian 
ideas  of  art,  72  ;  stars  first  studied 
by  men  at,  75 ;  stars  shine 
brightest  in,  80 ;  custom  of 
builders  in,  89 

Chandra  Gupta,  dynasty  of,  63 

Christianity,  influence  of  Rome  on, 
318-322 

Christians,  persecutions  of,  317, 
.318 

Cicero,  his  letter  to  Atticus,  269  ; 
on  value  of  slave  life,  288,  289 

Circus  Maximus,  the,  298 

Civilisation,  spread  in  Europe  of, 
16-18  ;  begins  with  the  crack 
of  the  slave-whip,  53  ;  Babylon 
the  real  historical  link  between 
Eastern  and  Western,  63  ;  Egyp- 
tian, believed  to  have  originated 
in  Babylon,  72 

Cleisthenes,  purges  the  Solonian 
system,  166 

Code  of  Hammurabi,  quoted,  81, 
83,  102,  106,  108,  118,  119;  ex- 
tracts from,  showing  social  life 
of  the  period,  120-124 

Code  of  Justinian,  slave  tariff  of, 
283 

Codrus,  legends  of,  159 

Colosseum,  the,  298,  315 

Column  of  Trajan,  299,  307 

Comte,  quoted,  104,  105 

Constantine,  the  cross  carried  be- 
fore him,  319 

Conveyancing,  Roman,  255 

Corinth,  a  famous  slave-market,  270 

Crete,  symbols  discovered  in,  135 

Cronus,  the  god  of  Greek  slaves, 
187 

Croton,  city  of,  222  ;  destroys 
Sybaris,  226 

Crucifixion  of  slaves,  288 

Cumae,  city  of,  222,  223  ;  Sibylline 
Books  of,  243 

Cuneiform  writing  in  Babylon,  70 
Cyaxares,  King  of  Media,  the  de- 
stroyer of  Nine  veh,  70 


342 


INDEX 


Cyrus,  King  of  Persia,  the  destroyer 
of  IBabylon,  70  :  received  with 
shouts  of  joy  at  Babylon,  127 

Darius^  and  the  Athenians,  168  ; 
bequeaths  his  fury  to  his  son,  169 

Debt,  effect  of  the  law  of,  266-268 

Delitzsch,  quoted,  74,  75 

Delos,  large  slave  traffic  of,  270 

Delphi,  bronze  razors  found  at, 
135  ;  Temple  of  Apollo  at,  205 

Democracy,  Athenian,  the  founder 
of  the,  164  J  effect  of  victories 
on,  171  ;  a  State  Socialism,  173 

De  Morgan,  the  discoverer  of  the 
Code  of  Hammurabi,  118 

Demosthenes,  slaves  in  time  of, 
190  ;  on  human  torture,  202,  203 

Dialects,  European,  explanation  of 
great  variety  of,  14,  15 

Diodorus  Siculus,  on  slavery,  194 

Dionysus,  names  of,  150 

Dracon,  asked  to  draw  up  a  code 
of  law,  162 

Druids,  Caasar  fascinated  by  reli- 
gion of,  242 

Ea,  the  Spirit  of  the  Deep,  legend 
of,  85 

Edict  of  Theodoric,  295 

Egyptian  civilisation  believed  to  be 
of  Babylonian  origin,  72  ;  hiero- 
glyphics related  closely  to  early 
Babylonian  writing,  72 

Elba,  early  exploration  of,  221 

Eleusis,  Trojan  pottery  found  at, 

Elysian  Fields,  142 

England,  broken  off  from  Europe,  2 

English  Channel,  shallowness  of, 

in  parts,  2 
Eridu,  seaport  of,  87 
Esquiline  cemetery,  discovery  at, 

334 
Esquiline  hill,  ruins  on,  237,  238 
Etna,  effect  on  sailors  of,  222 
Etruscans,  a  seafaring  nation,  231- 

233;  religion  of,  240,  241 
Eumetiides^  the,  of  /Eschylus,  154, 

155 


Europe,  Asia,  and  Africa,  evidence 
of  their  having  formed  one  con- 
tinent, I,  2 

Europe  in  the  time  of  Julius  Czesar, 

131 
Ezekiel,  quoted,  148 

Fever,  altars  raised  to,  238,  239 
Firths   of    Scotland,    once   inland 

valleys,  4 
Flora   of  Spain   betrays   signs   of 
continuity    of    African    vegeta- 
tion, I 
Forum,  the  Roman,  238,  243 ;  price 

paid  for  site  of,  298 
Forum  of  Augustus,  298 
Forum  of  Peace,  304 
Forum  of  Trajan,  298 
Free  Trade  at  Athens,  175 
Furies  or  Erinyes,  Greek  concep- 
tion of,  153,  154;  fugitive  slaves 
at  temple  of,  188,  189 

Gibbon,  quoted,  335 

Gibraltar,  explanation  of  form  of,  4 

Gladiators,  their  home  in  Capua, 
223  ;  slaves  as,  281  ;  hiring  of, 
283  ;  combats  of,  314 

Gods  of  Rome,  242  et  sqq. 

Greece,  early  civilisation  of,  132  ; 
discoveries  of  ancient  pottery, 
etc.,  in,  134,  135  ;  worship  of 
stones,  pillars,  and  trees  in,  136  ; 
Syrian  influence  in  prehistoric, 
137  ;  the  East  the  source  of  civi- 
lisation of,  138  ;  the  people, 
language,  and  historical  name 
of,  140  ;  originof  names  of  States 
in,  141  ;  command  of  the  sea 
shaped  the  main  destiny  of,  141 ; 
invention  of  mast  and  sail  taken 
advantage  of  in,  141  ;  Strabo's 
praise  of,  142,  143  ;  piratical  de- 
scents on  coasts  of,  143  ;  kidnap- 
ping by  Phoenicians  in,  144  ; 
Tyrian  purple  manufactured  from 
the  murex  found  on  coasts  of, 
145  ;  capture  of  purple  silk  dyed 
in,  146  ;  metallic  currency  in, 
146,   147 ;    connection    between 


INDEX 


343 


trade  and  religion  in,  147  ;  nume- 
rous gods  of,  148-150  ;  restless- 
ness in  religion  and  politics  of 
people  of,  151  ;  vengeance  in 
hands  of  the  citizen  of,  154; 
public  opinion  first  created  in, 
156  ;  land  ownership  in  ancient, 
158  ;  existence  of  caste  in,  160- 
162  ;  the  poor  the  slaves  of  the 
rich  in,  163;  movements  towards 
liberty  in,  166;  effect  of  Mara- 
thon on  imagination  of,  169; 
Xerxes'  ships  shattered  and  trea- 
sure cast  up  on  shores  of,  170; 
democracy  of,  171  ;  Athens  the 
fagade  of,  178  ;  slavery  in,  180- 
214;  the  decay  of,  214;  effects 
of  overcrowding  in,  222 

Greeks,  known  asjavan  or  Javanas, 
132  ;  use  the  invention  of  mast 
and  sail,i4i ;  compelled  to  supply 
iron  to  Phoenicians,  144;  surpass 
Orientals  in  manufactures  and 
art,  146  ;  their  unit  of  weight  and 
currency,  146,  147  ;  the  mytho- 
logy of,  148-152;  born  sailors, 
174  ;  horror  of  mechanical  work 
of,  180;  slavery  among,  180- 
214  ;  colonists  in  Italy,  222 

Crenelle,  remains  of  three  different 
races  disinterred  at,  10 

Habakkuk,  his  description  of  the 
terror  inspired  by  the  army   of 
Babylon,  102 
Hadrian,  the  legislation  of,  286 
Hammurabi,  King  of  Babylon,  en- 
gineering works  of,  78  ;  Code  of, 
81,  83,  102,  106,  108  ;  styles  him- 
self "a  righteous  king,"  119  ;  ex- 
tracts from  Code  of,  120-124 
Hanging  gardens  of  Babylon,  97 
Herodotus,  quoted,  'j'j,  83,  95,  96, 

100,  147,  160,  161,  171,  184 
Hesiod,  praise  of  labour  by,  181 
Hindustan,  similarity  of  language 
to  that  of  the  Greeks,  Romans, 
and  Celts,  13;  Aryans  in,  25  et 
seq. ;  early  social  organisation  in, 
48-60;   slavery  in,  50-56;  basis 


of  principle  of  penal  system  in, 
51;  Buddhism  in,  60-66;  con- 
solidated by  dynasty  of  Chandra 
Gupta,  63 

Homer,  his  description  of  Mycenee, 
135;  his  description  of  the 
Phoenicians,  143;  quoted,  154; 
names  the  sea  "  the  briny,"  219 

Hommel,  quoted,  86 

Honorius,  anecdote  of,  324,  325 

Human  labour,  myth  relating  the 
origin  of  the  division  of,  47 

Hume,  essay  of,  quoted,  183 

Iapygians,  an  early  nationality  in 
Italy,  230,  234 

India,  invasion  of,  by  Aryans,  31- 
34 ;  Mohammedan  invasion  of, 
after  Buddhism  driven  out,  59 

Indian  Ocean,  features  of  the  bed 
of,  5 

Insurance  agency  for  slaves 
founded,  189 

Iron,  Celts  possessed  mines  of,  in 
Europe,  16 

Israel,  religion  of,  74,  75 

Italy,  called  Hesperia,  the  Evening 
Land,  220;  considered  a  "holy 
island,"  221;  Greek  cities  in,  222- 
224 ;  racial  disturbances  in  early, 
230-235  ;  polyglot  languages  in, 
234 ;  rude  engineering  in  early, 
236 ;  pile-dwellings  in,  236 ;  the 
military  training  -  ground  of 
Rome,  257  ;  the  first  great 
slave  -  market  of  Rome,  269  ; 
industries  in,  305,  306 

Jacob's  dream,  136 

Javan  or  Javanas,  Greeks  known 

as,  132 
Jews,     cry     of     revenge     against 

Babylon  of  captive,  104 
Johns,  Mr.,  quoted,  1 16-1 18,   121, 

123 
Judges     and     juries,     chosen     by 

people  of  Athens,  156 
Jupiter,  the  god,  243,  244 
Justinian,  the  legislation  of,   286  ; 

Code  of,  319 


344 


INDEX 


Juvenal,  a  deep  thinker,  248,  249; 
criticism  on,  307  ;  his  view  of 
Roman  society,  308,  309  ;  satires 
of,  312 

Kabulistan,  evidence  of  Aryans 

coming  from,  26 
Kapila,  tlie  doctrine  of,  60 
Khyber  Pass,  Aryans  enter  India 

by,  31 

Lamaism,  a  kind  of  Asiatic  Catho- 
licism, 62 

Land  ownership  in  Greece,  158 

Languages,  evidences  of  pre- 
historic relations  of,  12-15 

Lares  and  Penates,  the  household 
gods,  249,  250 ;  the  State  also 
possessed,  254 

Larsa,  the  "  City  of  the  Sun,"  80  ; 
the  EUasar  of  Genesis,  90 

Latium,  Plain  of,  altars  on,  238 

Laurion,  silver  mines  of,  190-194  ; 
discoveries  at,  191 ;  influence  on 
Athens  of  mines  of,  195-197 

Law  of  Nations,  292 

Laws  of  Manu,  social  organisation 
of  early  Hindustan  presented  by 
the,  48-60  ;  compared  with  Code 
of  Hammurabi,  119,  120 

Laws  of  Moses,  influenced  by  a 
Babylonian  code,  75 

Laws  of  Solon,  228,  229 

Legion,  the  Roman,  how  modelled, 
258 

Lemnos,  recent  discovery  m,  231 

Leonidas,  at  Thermopyls,  169 

Lex  Petronia,  prohibits  fights  be- 
tween slaves  and  wild  beasts,  285 

Lex  Poetelia,  a  great  reform,  268 

Licinian  laws,  the,  264 

Ligurians,  an  early  nationality  in 
Italy,  221,  230,  234 

Livy,  the  historian,  227,  230 

Lucretius,  scepticism  of,  248 

LucuUus,  prisoners  captured  by, 
sold,  269 

Macrobius,  on  the  manners  of 
his  age,  310 


Mahomet,  the  foe  of  Buddha,  64 
Marathon,    effect    on    Greece    of 

battle  of,  169 
Marcus  Aurelius,  fete-days  in  the 

reign  of,  316 
Mark  Antony,  price  paid  for  two 

slaves  by,  283 
Marriage,     a     sacred      institution 

among   early   Aryans,  37  ;    also 

among  the  Romans,  252 
Marseilles,  founding  of,  142 
Martial,  the  poet,  309 
Mast  and  sail  used  by  Greeks,  141 
Mediterranean  Sea,  the  naming  of 

the,  218,  219 
Mesopotamia,  climatic  features  of, 

79-81 
Migration,  a  law  of  Nature,  7 ;  of 

animals  and  vegetation,  7-9  ;  of 

races,  9-12,  23-34 
Milk,  in  diet  and  ritual  of  Aryans, 

35 
Miltiades,     defeats     Persians     at 

Marathon,  169;  effects  of  suc- 
cess on,  171 

Mongol  hordes  penetrate  to  the 
heart  of  Europe,  23 

Mycenae,  bronze  razors  found  at, 
134;  called  "much  golden"  by 
Homer,  135  ;  the  gate  of,  136 

Nebuchadnezzar,  prayer  of,  74  ; 

restores  the  prestige  of  Babylon, 

94  ;  cruelty  of,  103 
Nemesis,     influence      on     Greek 

national      life     of,     152,      153; 

Temple  of,  169;  dedications  to, 

335 
Neptune,  sea  god  of  the  Romans, 

220 
Nero,  slaves  in  the  reign  of,  281  ; 
wished  to  call  Rome  Neropolis, 
298  ;    palace  of,   301  ;    persecu- 
tion of  Christians  by,  317 
Nicias,  treatment  of  slaves  by,  192 
Nineveh,  medical  literature  found 
in  ruins  of  palace  at,  81  ;   crea- 
tion     of,    91  ;     explanation     of 
mounds  covering,  95  ;    law  and 
religion  of,  the  same  as  in  Baby- 


INDEX 


345 


Ion,    I02 ;    traffic  which  used   to 

reach  Babylon  stops  at,  126 
Nippur,  city  of,  87  ;  discoveries  at, 

88 
Nirvana,  the  cry  for  delivery  from 

existence,  60 
Nistoun,  Assurbanipal's  cruelty  at, 

103,  104 
North  Sea,  contains  remnants  of  a 

great  forest,  2,  3 

Observation     of    the    sky   and 

motions     of    birds     by    Roman 

magistrates,  240 
Official  title  of  the  Roman  people, 

256 
Oracle  of  Delphi,  Rome  officially 

represented  at,  242 

Pacific  Ocean,  features  of  the  bed 
of,  5 

Palatine  hill,  the,  238 

Palm-tree,  imported  to  Greece 
from  Phoenicia,  144-146 

Pariahs,  the  lowest  level  of  Hindu 
civilisation,  54 

Parthenon  of  Athens,  176,  177 

Patricians  and  plebs,  the  struggle 
between,  260-262 

Paulus  ^milius,  auction  of  pris- 
oners taken  by,  269 

Pausanias,  quoted,  169  ;  at  Athens, 
177 

Peloponnesian  war,  206,  213 

Penal  system  in  Hindustan,  basis 
of  principle  of,  5 1 

Penitential  psalms,  where  com- 
posed, 86 

Pericles,  communistic  features  of 
his  scheme,  172;  used  the  lan- 
guage of  Free  Trade,  175  ; 
population  of  Athens  in  time 
of,  184 

Petronius,  satires  of,  312^  313 

Phidias,  statues  by,  177,  204 

Phocaeans,  stated  to  be  founders  of 
Marseilles,  142 

Phoenicia,  the  land  of  palms,  145  ; 
decline  of  trade  of,  175 


Phoenicians,  maritime  supremacy 
of,  141  ;  Homer's  description  of, 
143  ;  trade  with  Greece  of  the, 
144-146  ;  slave  trade  carried  on 
by,  181 

Pile-dwellings  in  Italy,  236 

Piracy,  the  first  form  of  sea-borne 
commerce,  143 

Pirseus,  the  busiest  port  of  Greece, 

174,  175 

Pisistratus,  foreign  artists  invited 
by,  139;  holds  the  "tyranny"  of 
Athens,  165  ;  the  overthrow  of 
his  dynasty,  166 

Pitoura,  700  men  crucified  before 
gate  of,  104 

Plataea,  battle  of,  184 

Plato,  quoted,  160,  175  ;  enslaved 
and  ransomed,  181  ;  on  slavery, 
187;  "Republic"  of,  197;  on 
loss  of  martial  spirit,  210 

Plebeian,  the,  originally  an  out- 
cast, 251 

Pliny,  quoted,  192,  283,  291,   305, 

329 
Plutarch,  quoted,  160,  176,  192,  281 
Polybius,   quoted,   210,    220,    241, 

243.  249 
Pompeii,  discovery  in  ruins  of,  316 
Pontifex    Maximus,   office    of  the, 

239 
Portico  of  the  Septa,  rich  dealers 

in  the,  306 

Poseidon,  Temple  of,  141  ;  wor- 
shipped with  Athena,  159; 
Athenian  belief  in,  170 

Public  opinion  first  created  in 
Greece,  156 

Quiet,  statue  raised  to,  334 
Quintus  Curtius,  quoted,  77,  97,  99 

Racial  affinities,  probable  cause 
of,  6 

Racial  amalgamation,  evidences  of 
prehistoric,  I,  2 

Rig-Veda,  the,  69 

Rivers,  used  as  guides  by  man,  24 

Romans,  were  essentially  lands- 
men,  219;   ancient  customs   of 

Z 


346 


INDEX 


the,  239-241  ;  religion  and  gods 
of  the,  241-251  ;  household  gods 
of  the,  249,  250;  ownership  of 
property  by,  251-255  ;  their  ideas 
of  conveyancing,  255;  official 
title  of  the,  256  ;  cause  of  mili- 
tary strength  of  the,  257,  258  ; 
slavery  among  the,  264  et  seq.; 
authority  of  father  among  the, 
266  ;  commerce  of  the,  300  ;  rich- 
ness and  luxury  of  the,  303-307  ; 
decadence  of  the,  313;  public 
amusements  of  the,  313-318  ; 
the  cross  engraved  on  shields 
of  soldiers  of  the,  319  ;  dedica- 
tions on   private   tombs  of  the, 

335 
Rome,   neglect   of  sea  power  by, 

220 ;  early  social  crisis  in,  226 ; 
economic  and  social  disease  of, 
227  ;  pestilence  frequent  in,  239  ; 
consulting  of  omens  in,  240 ; 
gods  of  Egypt  and  the  East 
brought  to,  242  ;  family  life  in, 
249  ;  household  gods  of,  249, 
250 ;  tradition  regarding  the 
founder  of,  253,  254  ;  her  wealth 
the  fruit  of  aggression,  257  ; 
foreign  policy  of,  259  ;  the  dis- 
union of,  260-262 ;  sterility  of 
politics  of,  262  ;  slavery  in,  264 
et  seq.;  Italy  the  great  slave- 
market  of,  269  ;  price  of  slaves 
in,  282-284;  cruelty  to  slaves  in, 
288-290  ;  Greek  architects  em- 
ployed in,  298  ;  commerce  of, 
300  ;  the  water  supply  of,  301  ; 
open  spaces  in,  303  ;  the  trea- 
sures of,  304-307  ;  public  amuse- 
ments and  shows  in,  313-318  ; 
Christianity  in,  318-322 ;  the 
decay  of,  325-335 
Romulus,  the  founder  of  Rome,  254 

St.  Augustine,  quoted,  262,  263 
St.  Chrysostom,  denounces  cruelty, 

319 
St.    Jerome,   deplored   the   fall   of 

Rome,  319;  ashamed  of  Chris- 
tians   lapsing,    321  ;    greatness 


of,  322 ;  witnesses  shrinkage  of 
Roman  world,  328 

Salamis,  Greek  superiority  at,  169, 
170  ;  masts  of  ships  captured  at, 
used  architecturally,  176,  177 

Salvianus,  quoted,  319,  320 

Sardanapalus  (Assurbanipal),  dis- 
covery of  medical  literature  in 
the  ruins  of  his  palace,  81  ; 
policy  of,  103;  cruelty  of,  104 

Sargon  I.,  the  political  founder  of 
Babylon,  71  ;  a  strong  man,  92  ; 
inscriptions  regarding,  93 

Scapegoats,  sacrifice  at  Athens  of 
human,  150 

Scotland,  dogs  of,  prized  in  Rome, 
300 

Sea  of  Aral,  formation  of,  6 

Seneca,  quoted,  287,  291 

Sennacherib,  poHcy  of,  103 

Sicily,  part  of  a  broken  bridge 
once  uniting  Europe  and  Africa, 

''2  ... 

Skulls,  deductions  of  racial  distri- 
bution from  discovery  of,  9-12 

Slavery,  conditions  of,  in  Hindus- 
tan, 50-56 ;  taken  for  granted 
by  St.  Paul,  63 ;  sources  of  in- 
formation regarding,  at  Babylon, 
102  ;  considered  beneficial  as  a 
"military  institution,"  105;  in 
Rome,  264  et  seq. 

Slaves,  seven  kinds  of,  50  ;  life  and 
treatment  in  Babylon  of,  106- 
125;  difference  between  Hebrew 
and  Babylonian,  113;  diseases 
affecting,  114-116;  supposition 
that  property  was  owned  by, 
1 1 6-1 18;  more  numerous  than 
citizens  at  Athens,  157;  insur- 
ance of,  189  ;  torture  in  Rome 
of,  201  ;  liberation  at  Athens  of, 
204  ;  liable  to  military  service, 
206 ;  Rome's  source  of,  265  ; 
the  sale  of,  270-274;  epilepsy 
among,  273  ;  vivisected  and 
crucified,  288;  metal  collars 
with  inscriptions  on,  290 

Socrates,  on  slavery,  182,  199 

Solon,  "champion  of  the  people," 


INDEX 


347 


163  ;  founder  of  the  democracy, 

164  ;  his  system  republican,  165 
Soothsayers,  Roman  and  Etruscan, 

241 
Sophocles,  quoted,  149,  200 
Sour,  cruelties  enacted  at,  104 
Sparta,   dual    monarchy    in,    157  ; 

caste  in,  161 
States,  the  rise  and  fall  of,  18-21 
Stilicho,  the  spirit  animating,  324; 

brilHant  victories  gained  by,  329 
Strabo,  quoted,  97,   98,   142,   I43> 

160 
Sudras,  social  position  of,  48,  50- 

52  ;  slaves  of  the  State,  54 
Sumerians,  rivals  of  the  Accadians, 

87  ;  monuments  of,  89 
Sybaris,  city  of,  222,  223  ;  luxury 

of,  224  ;  the  destruction  of,  226 
Symmachus,       contrasted        with 

Jerome,  322,  323 

Tacitus,   religious   bias   of,   248  ; 

quoted,  291 
Tarentum,  city  of,  222  ;  source  of 

riches  of,  224 
Telloh,  discovery  of  monument  with 

oldest  battle  picture  in  the  world 

at,  88,  89 
Temple  of  Bel,  at  one  time  a  great 

religious  centre,  88 ;  area  of,  97  ; 

rebuilding  of,  attempted  by  Alex- 
ander the  Great,  98 
Temple  of  Castor,  slaves  sold  in, 

270 
Temple  of  Concord,  303 
Temple  of  Nemesis,  169,  213 
Temple  of  Poseidon,  141,  178 
Temple  of  Saturn,  245 
Terminus,  the  god  of  boundaries, 

252,  254 
Tertullian,    pamphlet    of,   320 ;    a 

brilliant  jurist,  322 
Thebes,  the  capture  of,  190 
Themistocles,  his  sacrifice,  1 50  ;  the 

victor  at  Salamis,  170  ;  effects  of 

success  on,  171 
Theodosian  Code,  319,  321 
Thera,  once  joined  to  Therasid,  133; 

discoveries  made  at,  134 


Thermopylae,  the  charge  at,   169 

171 
Thucydides,  quoted,  142,  184,  234 
Tiberius,  appointing  of  magistrates 

in  the  reign  of,  328 
Tiela,  capture  of,  and  cruelties  at, 

104 
Tiglath-pileser  I.,  conquests  of,  93  ; 

policy  of,  103  ;  gives  6000  men  as 

slaves  to  his  people,  104 
Tiryns,  discoveries  at,  1 34  ;  altar  of 

Zeus  at,  137 
Trajan,  the  Emperor,  slaves  of,  281  ; 

Forum  of,  298  ;  column  of,  299, 

307 
Tribunes,  result  of  the  creation  of, 

260 
Troy,  discoveries  at,  134 
Twelve  Tables,  Laws  of  the,  229, 

252,  254 
Tyrian  purple,  manufacture  of,  145 

Ur,  Abraham  dwelt  at,  T})  j  ^  colony 
of  Nippur,  87 

Varro,  quoted,  274,  275 

Vassilief,  quoted,  62 

Vedas,  the,  fascination  of,  25  ;  gam- 
bling mentioned  in,  36  ;  Indian 
aurora  described  in,  41  ;  concep- 
tion of  sin  in,  42  \  changes  in,  45 

Vedic  hymns,  reference  to  Aryans 
in,  31  ;  full  of  spirit  of  victory,  }y2t 

Vegetation,  migration  of,  7,  8 

Veii,  city  of,  231,  232  ;  the  fall  of, 
259 

Vesta,  the  altar,  in  Roman  house- 
holds, 250 

Via  Appia,  the  tombs  in,  281  ; 
joined  Rome  and  Capua,  300 

Via  Sacra,  slave-shops  in,  270;  gold- 
smiths in,  306 

Via  Suburra,  slave-shops  in,  270 

Virgil,  248 

Vivisection  of  slaves,  288 

Volcanic  influence,  traces  of,  2-6 

Vritra,  the  demon  of  drought,  40 

V/aols  of  Aurelian,  building  of  the, 
207  .    ; 


'  «    •  *   » 

•        *     t 


348 


INDEX 


Wine,  etymology  of  the  word,  8,  9     , 

Words,  similarity  in  different  Ian-  i 

guages  of,  8,  9,  13  j 

i 

Xenophon  on  Babylon,  96  ;  his  re-  I 
mark  on  Athens,  174  ;  on  slavery,  I 
184,  186,  190  ;  pamphlet  on  silver  ; 
mines  by,  196,  197  j 


Xerxes,  sets  out  to  conquer  Greece, 
169  ;  destruction  of  ships  of,  170 

Yoke,  importance  of  the  invention 
of,  25 

Zend-Avesta,  30 

Zeno,  noble  doctrine  of,  198 

Zeus,  hymn  to,  monotheistic,  151 


THE    END 


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